LIBRARY 


THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

DR.    ANNA    B.    LEFLER 
IN   MEMORY  OF  HER   SISTER 
GRACE  LEFLER 


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VOLUME    II 

ENGLAND'S   EFFORT 

LETTERS    TO   AN    AMERICAN    FRIEND 


Spring-time  in  the  North  Sea — Snow  on  a  British  Battleship. 


THE  WAR  ON  ALL  FRONTS 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

LETTERS  TO   AN   AMERICAN   FRIEND 


BY 
MRS.    HUMPHRY   WARD 


WITH    A    PREFACE    BY 

JOSEPH    H.    CHOATE 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW    YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1919 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORxNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


Preface 

HAS  ENGLAND  DONE  ALL  SHE  COULD? 

That  is  the  question  which  Mrs.  Ward,  replying  to  some 
doubts  and  queries  of  an  American  friend,  has  under- 
taken to  answer  in  this  series  of  letters,  and  every  one 
who  reads  them  will  admit  that  her  answer  is  as  com- 
plete and  triumphant  as  it  is  thriUing.  Nobody  but  a 
woman,  an  EngUshwoman  of  warm  heart,  strong  brain, 
and  vivid  power  of  observation,  could  possibly  have 
written  these  letters  which  reflect  the  very  soul  of  Eng- 
land since  this  wicked  and  cruel  war  began.  She  has 
unfolded  and  interpreted  to  us,  as  no  one  else,  I  think, 
has  even  attempted  to  do,  the  development  and  abso- 
lute transformation  of  English  men  and  women,  which 
has  enabled  them,  Hving  and  dying,  to  secure  for  their 
proud  nation  under  God  that  "new  birth  of  freedom" 
which  Lincoln  at  Gettysburg  prophesied  for  his  own 
countrymen.  Really  the  cause  is  the  same,  to  secure 
the  selfsame  thing,  "that  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  and  for  the  people  may  not  perish  from 


vi  PREFACE 

the  earth"; — and  if  any  American  wishes  to  know  how 
this  has  been  accomphshed,  he  must  read  these  letters, 
which  were  written  expressly  for  our  enlightenment. 

Mrs.  Ward  had  marvellous  qualifications  for  this 
patriotic  task.  The  granddaughter  of  Doctor  Arnold 
and  the  niece  of  Matthew  Arnold,  from  childhood 
up  she  has  been  as  deeply  interested  in  politics  and  in 
public  affairs  as  she  has  been  in  literature,  by  which 
she  has  attained  such  world-wide  fame,  and  next  to 
English  politics,  in  American  politics  and  American 
opinion.  She  has  been  a  staunch  behever  in  the  great- 
ness of  America's  future,  and  has  maintained  close 
friendship  with  leaders  of  public  thought  on  both  sides 
of  the  water.  Her  only  son  is  a  member  of  Parliament, 
and  is  fighting  in  the  war,  just  as  all  the  able-bodied 
men  she  knows  are  doing. 

She  has  received  from  the  English  government  special 
opportunities  of  seeing  what  England  has  been  doing 
in  the  war,  and  has  been  allowed  to  go  with  her  daughter 
where  few  English  men  and  no  other  women  have  been 
allowed  to  go,  to  see  the  very  heart  of  England's  pre- 
paredness. She  has  visited,  since  the  war  began,  the 
British  fleet,  the  very  key  of  the  whole  situation,  with- 
out whose  unmatched  power  and  ever-increasing  strength 
the  Allies  at  the  outset  must  have  succumbed.    She 


PREFACE  vii 

has  watched,  always  under  the  protection  and  guidance 
of  that  wonderful  new  Minister  of  Munitions,  Lloyd 
George,  the  vast  activity  of  that  ministry  throughout 
the  country,  and  finally  in  a  motor  tour  of  five  hundred 
miles,  through  the  zone  of  the  Enghsh  armies  in  France, 
she  has  seen  with  her  own  eyes,  that  marvellous  organi- 
zation of  everything  that  goes  to  make  and  support  a 
great  army,  which  England  has  built  up  in  the  course 
of  eighteen  months  behind  her  fighting  Une.  She  has 
witnessed  within  three-quarters  of  a  mile  of  the  fight- 
ing line,  with  a  gas  helmet  at  hand,  ready  to  put  on,  a 
German  counter  attack  after  a  successful  English  ad- 
vance, something  which  no  other  woman,  except  her- 
self and  her  daughter,  who  accompanied  her,  has  ever 
had  the  opportunity  to  see. 

Mrs.  Ward  admits  that  at  the  beginning  England 
was  unprepared,  which  itself  demonstrated  that  as  a 
Nation  she  never  wished  for  war  with  Germany,  and 
never  expected  it.  Her  countrymen  had  no  faith  in 
Lord  Roberts's  ten-year-long  agitation  for  universal 
national  service,  based  on  the  portentous  growth  of 
the  German  army  and  navy.  She  never  knew  of  any 
hatred  of  Germany  in  the  country.  On  the  contrary, 
she  realized  what  England  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  owed  to  Germany  in  so  many  ways. 


viii  PREFACE 

England  was  not  absolutely  unprepared  in  the  sense 
that  the  United  States  is  unprepared,  even  for  self- 
defense  from  external  attack,  but  except  for  the  fleet 
and  her  little  expeditionary  force,  England  had  neither 
men  nor  equipment  equal  to  the  fighting  of  a  great  Con- 
tinental war. 

The  wholly  unexpected  news  of  the  invasion  of  Bel- 
gium aroused  the  whole  country  to  reaUze  that  war  on 
a  scale  never  known  before  had  come,  and,  as  the  firing 
upon  Fort  Sumter  awakened  America,  convinced  Eng- 
land that  she  must  fight  to  the  death  for  her  liberties, 
unready  as  she  was; — but  Mr.  Balfour,  the  First  Lord  of 
the  Admiralty,  says  that,  since  the  war  began,  she  Has 
added  one  million  to  the  tonnage  of  her  navy,  and  has 
doubled  its  personnel,  and  is  adding  more  every  day. 

In  the  matter  of  munitions  the  story  that  Mrs.  Ward 
tells  is  wonderful,  almost  beyond  belief.  Much  had  been 
done  in  the  first  eight  months  of  the  war,  in  the  building 
of  munition  shops,  and  the  ordering  of  vast  quantities 
from  abroad,  before  the  second  battle  of  Ypres,  in 
April,  1915,  which  led  to  the  formation  of  the  new  Coa- 
htion  Ministry,  including  a  wholly  new  department,  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions,  with  Mr.  Lloyd  George  at  its 
head. 

From  that  time  to  this  the  work  has  benii  colossal, 


PREFACE  ix 

and  almost  incredible,  and  without  serious  collision 
with  the  working  classes.  Vast  new  buUdings  have 
been  erected  all  over  England,  and  a  huge  staff,  running 
into  thousands,  set  in  action.  The  new  Minister  has  set 
out  with  determination  to  get  the  thing  done  at  what- 
ever cost,  and  to  remove  all  obstacles  that  he  found  in 
his  way.  The  Government  has  absolutely  taken  con- 
trol of  the  whole  work  of  the  creation  of  munitions  and 
the  regulation  of  workmen,  employed  in  it  by  whatever 
employers,  and  everything  and  everybody  has  had  to 
submit  to  his  imperious  will,  and  the  greatest  change 
of  all  has  been  the  employment  of  women  on  a  vast 
scale  to  do  the  work  that  only  men  had  ever  done  be- 
fore. France  had  set  about  it  immediately  after  the 
battle  of  the  Marne,  and  allowed  no  Frenchman  to  re- 
main idle  who  could  do  such  work, 

Mrs.  Ward  does  not  fail  to  do  full  justice  to  the  work- 
ing men  of  Great  Britain,  and  shows  that  besides  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  that  they  have  sent  to  the  fight- 
ing Une,  a  million  and  a  half  remained  at  work  in  the 
[shops,  creating  munitions  with  the  aid  of  skilled  experts 
and  the  astonishing  help  of  the  women,  who  never  be- 
fore had  expected  to  have  anything  to  do  with  guns 
and  shells,  with  bombs,  rifles,  and  machine-guns.  The 
old  ways  were  laid  aside,  old  distinctions  of  class  and  sex 


X  PREFACE 

forgotten,  and  all  worked  with  a  common  and  indomita- 
ble will  for  the  saving  of  the  country. 

To  give  a  single  instance,  what  was  a  few  months  ago 
a  smiling  pasture  is  now  found  covered  with  vast  build- 
ings, in  which  these  manufactures  are  carried  on  by  thirty- 
five  hundred  working  people,  of  whom  a  large  propor- 
tion are  women.  I  love  to  quote  a  single  sentence  from 
the  utterance  of  her  companion  on  a  visit  to  this  estab- 
Kshment:  "As  to  the  women,  they  are  saving  the 
country.  They  don't  mind  what  they  do.  Hours? 
They  work  ten  and  a  half,  or,  with  overtime,  twelve 
hours  a  day,  seven  days  a  week.  The  Government  are 
insisting  on  one  Sunday,  or  two  Sundays  a  month  off. 
I  don't  say  they  aren't  right,  but  the  women  resent  it. 
'We're  not  tired,'  they  say.  And  look  at  them!  They 
are  not  tired." 

This  unheard-of  spectacle  of  great  engineering  estab- 
hshments  filled  with  women,  all  hard  at  work,  is  a  sure 
proof  of  the  undying  purpose  of  the  whole  EngUsh  race. 
They  are  mostly  young  and  comely,  and  their  beauty 
of  form  and  feature  is  only  enhanced  by  their  enthu- 
siasm for  their  labors,  and  at  the  same  time  it  has  in- 
creased the  ardor  and  intensity  of  their  fellow  workmen. 
Mrs.  Ward  found  four  thousand  women  to  five  thousand 
men  engaged  in  this  nation-saving  labor,  in  a  single 


PREFACE  xi 

establishment.  They  know  that  they  are  setting  the 
skilled  laborers  free  for  work  which  women  cannot 
do,  and  the  unskilled  in  large  nmnbers  free  for  the 
army. 

Every  building,  as  well  as  every  man  and  woman, 
that  could  be  put  to  the  work,  has  been  availed  of,  and 
the  results  have  been  incredible.  Another  instance  she 
gives  of  special  interest:  "An  old  warehouse,  bought, 
so  to  speak,  overnight,  and  equipped  next  morning,  has 
been  turned  into  a  small  workshop  for  shell  production, 
employing  between  three  and  four  hundred  girls  with 
the  number  of  skilled  men  necessary  to  keep  the  new 
unskilled  labor  going.  These  girls  are  working  on  the 
eight-hours'  shift  system;  working  so  well  that  a  not 
uncommon  wage  among  them,  on  piece-work,  of  course, 
runs  to  somewhere  between  two  and  three  pounds  a 
week,"  and  all  the  time  they  are  at  work  they  remember 
that  they  are  doing  common  service  with  their  husbands, 
and  sweethearts,  and  sons,  and  brothers,  who  are  peril- 
ling their  Uves  in  the  trenches. 

None  of  this  distinguished  writer's  romances  com- 
pare in  vivid  description  and  heart-inspiring  eloquence 
with  these  accounts  that  she  gives  of  what  she  has  seen 
with  her  own  eyes  of  the  resurrection  of  England. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  anticipate  her  startling  and  thrill- 


xii  PREFACE 

ing  narratives  on  this  subject.  She  takes  for  her  text 
what  Mr.  Lloyd  George  said  in  his  speech  in  the  House 
of  Commons  on  reviewing  his  new  department:  "Un- 
less we  quicken  our  movements,  damnation  will  fall  on 
the  sacred  cause  for  which  so  much  gallant  blood  has 
flowed,"  and  Mr.  Asquith's  serious  words  in  December: 
"We  cannot  go  on,"  said  he,  "depending  upon  foreign 
countries  for  our  munitions.  We  haven't  the  ships  to 
spare  to  bring  them  home,  and  the  cost  is  too  great. 
We  must  make  them  ourselves." 

Mrs.  Ward  dwells  with  keen  insight  upon  the  difficul- 
ties met  with  among  the  trade-unions  and  labor  people, 
and  successfully  overcome,  and  explains  in  full  what 
they  call  over  there  the  work  of  the  Dilution  Commis- 
sioners, which  is  a  wholly  new  phrase  for  us,  and  she 
gives  this  clear  definition:  "Dilution  means,  of  course, 
that  under  the  sharp  analysis  of  necessity,  much  engi- 
neering work,  generally  reckoned  as  'skilled'  work,  and 
reserved  to  'skilled'  workmen  by  a  number  of  union 
regulations,  is  seen  to  be  capable  of  solution  into  vari- 
ous processes,  some  of  which  can  be  sorted  out  from  the 
others,  as  within  the  capacity  of  the  unskilled,  or  semi- 
skilled worker.  By  so  dividing  them  up  and  using  su- 
perior labor  with  economy,  only  where  it  is  really  neces- 
sary, it  can  be  made  to  go  infinitely  further,  and  the  in- 


PREFACE  xiii 

ferior,  or  untrained,  labor  can  then  be  brought  into  work 
where  nobody  supposed  it  could  be  used;  where,  in  fact, 
it  never  has  been  used."  This  novel  experiment,  to- 
gether with  the  equally  novel  employment  of  women  in 
such  work,  soon  proved  a  triumphant  success,  and  the 
women  proved  themselves  able  to  do  the  work  of  men, 
some  of  it  even  better.  There  were,  of  course,  difficul- 
ties at  first,  but  the  mischief,  whatever  it  was,  was 
quickly  cured,  and  in  one  factory  that  Mrs.  Ward  names, 
"men  and  women  soon  began  to  do  their  best.  The  out- 
put of  the  factory,  which  had  been  planned  for  four 
thousand  shells  a  week,  ran  up  to  twenty  thousand,  and 
everything  has  gone  smoothly  since." 

The  adaptation  of  firms  and  factories,  already  exist- 
ing, the  control  of  which  was  taken  by  the  Government, 
was  wonderful,  but  the  national  shell-factories,  founded, 
financed,  and  run  by  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  are 
more  wonderful  still,  and  give  us  many  new  ideas  about 
government  ownership  in  an  emergency,  which  we  may 
sometimes  have  to  think  of  more  seriously.  The  speed, 
the  efficiency,  the  success  of  the  new  system  have  been 
marvellous,  so  that  in  the  short  space  of  a  year  the  de- 
mands of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  Mr.  Asquith  have  been 
satisfied,  and  England  will  depend  no  more  upon  for- 
eign contracts  and  foreign  supplies  for  her  ammunition, 


xiv  PREFACE 

but  will  be  able  not  only  to  manufacture  all  she  can  use 
herself,  but  to  help  to  supply  her  Allies. 

In  one  department  of  labor,  it  is  a  very  startling 
thing  to  learn  that  "in  a  single  fuse  factory,  what  they 
call  the  danger  buildings,  mostly  women  are  employed. 
About  five  hundred  women  are  found  at  work  in  one  of 
these  factories  on  different  processes  connected  with 
the  delicate  mechanism  and  fiUing  of  the  fuse  and  gaine, 
some  of  which  is  really  dangerous,  Uke  detonator  work.'* 
It  is  the  insertion  in  the  shell  of  the  Uttle  pellet  which 
gives  it  its  death-deahng  power,  that  is  so  risky,  but  the 
women  do  not  shrink  from  even  this.  In  the  largest 
fuse  shop  known,  quite  new,  fourteen  hundred  girls,  in 
one  shift,  are  at  work. 

"An  endless  spectacle  of  gun-carriages,  naval  turrets, 
torpedo-tubes,  army  railway-carriages,  small  Hotchkisa 
guns  for  merchant  ships,  tool-making  shops,  gauge  shops, 
seems  to  be  going  on  forever,  and  in  the  tool-making 
shops  the  output  has  risen  from  forty-four  thousand  to 
three  million  a  year."  The  vastness  of  the  work,  and 
the  incessant  and  enormous  multiplication  of  all  the 
products  for  war  must  be  as  overwhelming  as  it  is  monot- 
onous. And  then  there  were  the  huge  shipyards,  which 
before  the  war  were  capable  of  the  berth  of  twenty 
ships  at  once,  from  the  largest  battleship  downward. 


PREFACE  XV 

and  which,  as  we  have  ah-eady  had  Mr.  Balfour's  word 
for  it,  have  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  added  a  mil- 
lion tons  to  the  navy,  but  Mrs.  Ward  in  her  rapid  jour- 
neys had  not  time  to  stop  and  inspect  these,  to  our  very 
great  regret,  for  her  description  of  them  would  have 
been  most  instructive. 

She  declares  from  actual  observation  that  in  the  Clyde 
district,  in  whose  populous  centre  some  threats  of  dis- 
quiet have  existed,  the  work  done  by  thousands  and  tens 
of  thousands  of  workmen  since  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
especially  in  the  great  shipyards,  and  done  ^dth  the 
heartiest  and  most  seK-sacrificing  good-will,  has  been 
simply  invaluable  to  the  nation,  and  will  never  be  for- 
gotten, and  the  invasion  of  women  there  has,  perhaps, 
been  more  startling  to  the  workmen  than  anj'where 
else.  T\Tiere  not  a  single  woman  was  employed  in  the 
works  and  factories  before  the  war,  except  in  textiles, 
"there  will  soon  be  fifteen  thousand  of  them  in  the 
munition  workshops  alone,  and  that  will  not  be  the 
end." 

WTierever  she  goes,  Mrs.  Ward's  eyes  are  wide  open. 
From  her  own  home,  which  is  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the 
most  patriotic  regions  of  the  realm,  she  can  witness  the 
perpetual  actiNnty  which  has  come  about  in  preparation 
for  the  war  in  all  its  varied  phases  and  branches;  every- 


xvi  PREFACE 

thing  and  everybody  is  in  vigorous  motion,  both  there 
and  in  all  the  counties  of  England  which  she  has  visited. 
Great  camps  in  every  direction  for  the  shelter  and  train- 
ing of  recruits,  all  coming  and  going,  all  marching  and 
countermarching,  training  and  drilling  everywhere,  and 
as  fast  as  the  citizen  is  converted  into  a  soldier,  he  is 
bound  for  the  seat  of  war  with  aU  the  equipments  that 
war  requires,  tramping  everywhere,  tramp,  tramp,  along 
the  land;  tramp,  tramp,  along  the  sea,  until  the  new 
supports,  all  ready  for  vital  service,  reach  their  destina- 
tion on  French  soil. 

Mrs.  Ward  has  made  a  careful  study  of  the  eflFect  of 
the  novel  introduction  of  women  into  all  these  works 
of  men,  especially  in  the  munition  factories,  and  dwells 
with  great  significance  upon  the  rapidity  of  the  women's 
piece-work  and  the  minghng  of  classes,  where  educated 
and  refined  girls  work  side  by  side  and  very  happily  with 
those  of  an  humbler  type.  What  Mrs.  Ward  well  calls 
"the  common  spirit"  inspires  them  all,  and  holds  them 
all  in  just  and  equal  relations.  At  every  step  she  is 
startled  by  the  vastness  of  the  work  and  the  immense 
hand  that  women  have  in  it,  finding  one  shop  turning 
out  about  four  thousand  shrapnel  and  four  thousand 
high-explosive  shells  per  week,  heavy  shell  work  all, 
which  they  thought  at  first  they  must  furnish  men  to  lift 


PREFACE  xvii 

in  and  out  of  the  machines,  but  "the  women  thrust  the 
men  aside  in  five  minutes."  Surely  this  new  education 
of  women,  of  these  girls  and  women  who  are  to  become 
the  mothers  of  the  next  generation,  must  have  a  most 
inspiring  and  exalting  effect  upon  the  days  to  come. 
War  may  be  postponed  for  whole  generations,  but  Eng- 
land will  never  fail  to  be  ready  for  it  as  a  necessary  part 
of  the  education  of  the  race. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  this  war  is  breaking  down  the 
barriers  that  have  heretofore  been  impassable,  not  only 
between  men  and  women,  but  between  the  various 
classes  of  society,  and  that  it  cannot  possibly  end  with- 
out bringing  these  more  closely  together,  all  working  to 
the  same  end  in  a  more  perfect  harmony,  and  that  the 
result  of  it  must  be  that  England  will  hereafter  be  an 
even  more  perfect  democracy  than  it  has  been  up  to  this 
time. 

France!  Glorious  France!  The  conduct  of  whose 
government  and  people  in  the  war  seems  to  have  been 
absolutely  perfect,  has  at  last  reached  a  wonderful  re- 
sult after  her  hundred  years  of  agonies  and  revolutions. 
We  hear  from  France  no  complaints,  no  internal  dis- 
sensions, but  all  the  people,  mankind  and  womankind, 
working  together,  each  in  its  proper  sphere,  to  the  one 
common  end,  the  salvation  of  the  State.    I  trust  that  we 


xviii  PREFACE 

shall  never  forget  all  that  the  world  and  we,  especially, 
owe  to  France.  She  is  adding  to  our  obligations  now  by 
fighting  our  battles  for  us. 

And  now  with  her  daughter  under  the  special  protec- 
tion and  guidance  of  the  war  ofl5ce,  this  distinguished 
'  woman  followed  the  khaki-clad  soldiers  of  England,  now 
numbered  by  millions,  across  the  channel,  and  every- 
thing was  thrown  freely  open  to  her.  She  soon  found 
out  what  the  great  supply  bases,  on  which  the  British 
army  in  France  rests,  really  mean,  made  up  of  the 
Army  Ordnance,  Army  Service,  Army  Medical,  Rail- 
road, Motor,  and  Transport,  and  she  found  it  a  deeply 
interesting  study,  "whose  work  has  involved  the  labor 
of  some  of  the  best  brains  in  the  army,"  and  she  learned 
the  organizing  power  that  has  gone  to  make  the  career 
of  the  EngUsh  army  in  France  possible. 

There  was  the  immense  dock,  and  its  vast  store- 
house, the  largest  in  the  world,  "built  three  years  be- 
fore the  war,  partly,  it  is  said,  by  German  money,  to 
house  the  growing  cotton  trade  of  the  port,  but  now  it 
houses  a  large  proportion  of  the  food  of  the  British 
army,"  a  building  half  a  mile  long,  bounded  on  one  side 
by  the  docks,  where  the  ships  discharge  the  stores  and 
the  men,  and  on  the  other  by  the  railway  lines  whe^«  the 
trains  are  perpetually  loading  for  the  front.     On  tne 


PREFACE  XIX 

quays  snips  of  aD  nations,  except  Germany,  are  pouring 
out  their  stores,  and  on  the  other  side  the  trucks  that 
are  going  to  the  front  are  loading  with  the  supphes  that 
are  wanted  for  every  regiment  in  the  service.  Her 
eyes  Hght  upon  one  wired  in  space,  labelled  "Medical 
Comforts,"  and  generally  known  as  "The  Cage,"  where, 
while  medical  necessaries  are  housed  elsewhere,  are  "the 
dainties,  the  special  foods,  the  easing  appliances  of  all 
kinds,"  which  are  to  make  life  bearable  to  the  wounded 
men,  and  she  stops  to  think  how  the  shade  of  Florence 
Nightingale  would  have  paused  at  this  spot. 

The  huge  sheds  of  Army  Ordnance  are  filled  with  every- 
thing that  a  soldier  does  not  eat,  all  metal  stores,  what- 
ever, and  the  men  who  work  in  them  are  housed  in  one  of 
the  longest  sheds  in  tiers  of  bunks  from  floor  to  ceiling, 
and  then  there  are  the  repairing  sheds  and  workshops, 
established  near  by,  and  that  is  the  most  wonderful  thing 
of  the  whole  to  my  mind — never  done  before  in  connec- 
tion with  an  army  in  the  field.  Trainsful  of  articles  to  be 
repaired  come  down  from  the  front  every  day,  and  almost 
every  imaginable  article  that  the  men  at  the  front  can  use, 
from  guns  to  boots,  comes  here  to  be  repaired,  or  if  found 
beyond  repair,  to  be  sent  to  Yorkshire  for  shoddy.  The 
marvellous  thing  is  that,  as  soon  as  they  are  received, 
they  are  repaired  and  made  nearly  as  good  as  new  and 


XX  PREFACE 

returned  to  their  owners  at  the  front,  a  vast  work  in 
itself.  The  boot  and  uniform  sheds  alone,  where  again 
she  finds  five  hundred  French  women  and  girls,  and  the 
harness-making  room  are  doing  an  enormous  work. 
The  Colonel  in  charge  began  work  with  one  hundred 
and  forty  men,  and  is  now  employing  more  than  a  thou- 
sand, and  his  repairing  sheds  are  saving  thousands  of 
pounds  a  week  to  the  British  government. 

Recreation  and  amusement  are  supphed  in  near  local- 
ity for  the  waiting  soldiers  and,  although  the  snow  is 
more  than  ankle-deep,  they  visit  such  places  as  recrea- 
tion rooms  and  cinema  theaters,  and  on  a  neighboring 
hill  great  troops  of  men  are  going  through  some  of  the 
last  refinements  of  drill  before  they  start  for  the  front. 
Here  are  trenches  of  all  kinds  and  patterns,  in  which 
the  men  may  practise,  planned  according  to  the  latest 
experience  brought  from  the  front.  "The  instructors 
are  all  men  returned  from  the  front,  and  the  new  re- 
cruits, trained  up  to  this  last  point,  would  not  be  patient 
of  any  other  teachers." 

Having  thus  seen  all  that  one  day  could  afford  them 
at  the  very  base  of  the  great  army,  our  visitors  make 
their  way  in  closed  motors  through  the  snow,  passing 
scores  of  motor  lorries,  and  other  wagons,  stuck  in  the 
snow-drifts.      They  stop  for  the  night  at  a  pleasant 


PREFACE  xxi 

hotel  full  of  officers,  mostly  English,  belonging  to  the 
Lines  of  Communication,  and  a  few  of  the  mothers  and 
sisters  of  the  poor  wounded  in  the  neighboring  hospi- 
tals, who  have  come  over  to  nurse  them. 

Every  gun,  every  particle  of  munition,  clothing,  and 
equipment,  and  whatever  else  is  necessary,  including 
the  food  of  the  armies,  every  horse,  every  vehicle,  has 
to  be  brought  across  the  British  channel,  to  maintain 
and  reinforce  the  ever-growing  British  army,  and  the 
ever-daily  increasing  congestion  at  all  the  ports  makes 
it  more  and  more  difficult  every  day  to  receive,  dis- 
embark, accommodate,  and  forward  the  multitude  of 
men  and  the  masses  of  material,  and  all  the  time  there 
are  thousands  of  troops  passing  through,  thousands  in 
the  hospitals,  and  thousands  at  work  on  the  docks  and 
storehouses.  Everything  tending  to  Tommy  Atkins's 
comfort  is  supplied,  including  again  palatial  cinemas 
and  concerts,  all  of  which  results  in  excellent  behavior 
and  the  best  of  relations  between  the  British  soldier 
and  the  French  inhabitants.  At  the  docks  armies  of 
laborers  and  lines  of  ships  discharging  men,  horses,  tim- 
ber, rations,  fodder,  coal,  coke,  petrol,  and  the  same  at 
the  storehouses  and  depots. 

The  visitors  spend  a  long  Sunday  morning  in  the 
motor  transport  depot,  and  it  gave  a  good  illustration 


xxii  PREFACE 

of  the  complete  system  of  discipline  and  organization 
that  prevailed  everywhere.  This  depot  began,  said  the 
Colonel  in  charge,  on  the  13th  of  August,  1914,  "with 
a  few  balls  of  string  and  a  bag  of  nails."  Its  present 
staff  is  about  five  hundred.  All  the  drivers  of  twenty 
thousand  motor  vehicles  are  tested  here,  and  the  depot 
^  exhibits  three  hundred  and  fifty  different  types  of  vehi- 
cles, and  in  round  figures,  one  hundred  thousand  sepa- 
rate parts  are  now  dealt  with,  stored,  and  arranged  in 
this  same  depot.  The  Sunday  morning  began  with  a 
simple  service  in  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion hut,  at  which  five  hundred  motor-drivers  attended, 
about  half  of  the  whole  number  in  the  station. 

The  same  day  they  explored  endless  camps  and  the 
wards  of  a  Red  Cross  hospital.  It  was  impossible  to 
take  in  everything  at  once,  and  our  ladies  retired  at 
night,  bewildered  by  mingled  impressions  of  "human 
energy,  human  intelligence,  human  suffering,"  but  full 
of  pride  and  exultation  at  the  efficiency  of  their  coun- 
try and  of  the  good  relations  of  their  soldiers  with  the 
[French.  They  carried  with  them  as  a  last  impression 
[of  the  day  the  picture  of  a  canteen  worked  day  and 
night  in  three  shifts  by  a  heroic  band  of  women  close 
by  the  railway  station,  full  of  soldiers  just  departing 
for  the  front,  young,  gay  and  full  of  spirits;  then  came 


PREFACE  xxiii 

the  train  to  take  the  soldiers  off  for  the  fighting  line, 
and  the  women,  left  behind,  set  up  the  song,  already 
familiar  in  the  Midlands,  "Keep  the  home  fires  burn- 
ing till  the  boys  come  home." 

In  the  village  where  they  stopped,  some  forty  miles 
from  the  actual  front,  a  special  messenger  from  the 
general  headquarters  brings  the  amazing  news  that 
General  Headquarters  invites  Mrs.  Ward  and  her 
daughter  for  two  days,  and  will  send  a  motor  for  them, 
if  they  accept,  which,  of  course,  they  did  upon  the  in- 
stant, looking  forward  with  eagerness  to  the  great  mys- 
teries of  the  front,  its  camps,  its  men,  and  its  hospitals, 
that  they  were  to  see  with  their  own  eyes  to-morrow. 

The  remainder  of  the  day  before  they  are  to  start  for 
the  front  suffices  for  the  visit  to  a  camp  set  down  in  one 
of  the  pleasantest  spots  in  France,  a  favorite  haimt 
of  French  artists  before  the  war,  now  occupied  by  a 
British  reinforcement  camp,  the  trees  having  all  been 
cut  away,  by  long  lines  of  hospitals,  by  a  convalescent 
depot,  and  by  the  training  grounds,  to  which  we  have 
already  referred. 

I  must  copy  the  bare  catalogue  of  what  this  vast 
camp  contained:  "Sleeping  and  mess  quarters  for  those 
belonging  to  the  new  armies;  sixteen  hospitals  with 
twenty-one  thousand  beds"  (and  this  shows  now  what 


xxiv  PREFACE 

it  was  to  be  near  the  front) ;  "  rifle  ranges;  training  camps; 
a  vast  laundry,  worked  by  French  women  under  British 
organization,  which  washes  for  all  the  hospitals  thirty 
thousand  pieces  a  day;  recreation  huts  of  every  possible 
kind;  a  cinema  theatre  seating  eight  hundred  men,  with 
performances  twice  a  day;  nurses  clubs;  officers  clubs; 
a  supply  depot  for  food;  an  ordnance  depot  for  every- 
thing that  is  not  food;  railroad  sidings  on  which  every 
kind  of  man  and  thing  can  go  out  and  come  in  without 
interruption;  a  convalescents'  depot  of  two  thousand 
patients;  and  a  convalescent  horse  depot  of  two  thou- 
sand horses;  all  this  in  one  camp,  established  since  last 
AprU." 

Ah!  But  the  deepest  impression  left  on  the  minds 
of  our  ladies  is  of  the  terrible  sufferings  in  the  hospitals, 
of  the  smiling  endurance  with  which  they  were  borne, 
of  the  timely  skill,  pity,  and  devotion  of  the  doctors 
and  nurses,  taking  care  of  the  twenty  thousand  wounded. 
ReaUzing  the  sympathy  of  America  with  all  these 
scenes  and  sufferings,  they  do  not  fail  to  note  the  hos- 
pitals organized  by  the  Universities  of  Chicago  and  of 
Harvard,  staffed  by  American  sisters  and  doctors,  each 
providing  thirty-four  doctors  and  eighty  nurses,  and 
dealing  with  a  thousand  patients,  and  a  convalescent 
lepot  of   two  thousand  beds.     Every  day  the  ambu- 


PREFACE  XXV 

lance  train  comes  in,  and  splendid  hospital  ships  are 
taking  the  brave  wounded  back  to  England  for  home 
and  rest. 

And  now  came  the  day  in  which  they  were  to  motor 
forty  miles  to  be  the  guests  of  the  G.  H.  Q.  Soon  they 
seemed  to  be  in  the  midst  of  the  battle,  "our  own  guns 
were  thundering  away  behind  us,  and  the  road  was 
more  and  more  broken  up  by  shell  holes."  The  British 
lines  are  just  beyond,  cottages  close  by,  and  the  German 
lines  just  in  front  of  a  wood  near  them,  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  away.  Aheady  they  had  been  nearer  than 
any  woman,  even  a  nurse,  had  been  in  this  war,  to  the 
actual  fighting  on  the  English  hue,  and  the  cup  of  im- 
pressions was  full.  They  actually  saw  the  brave  boys 
whom  they  had  passed  an  hour  before,  sitting  in  the 
fields  waiting  for  orders,  now  marching  into  the  trenches 
to  take  their  turn  there — they  knew  that  they  were 
marching  into  the  jaws  of  death,  but  they  walked  as 
quietly  and  as  cheerfully  as  if  they  were  going  to  a 
parade,  the  guns  crashing  close  by  them  all  the  time. 
The  firing  being  too  hot  for  the  women,  the  captain  in 
charge  of  them  was  relieved  when  they  elected  to  turn 
back. 

The  next  day,  their  second  as  guests  of  G.  H.  Q.,  as  they 
came  down  from  breakfast,  our  ladies  were  surprised 


xxvi  PREFACE 

to  find  the  motor  at  the  door  a  simple  Imich  being 
packed  up,  and  gas-helmets  got  ready  for  them  to  use, 
for  the  captain  greeted  them  in  the  best  of  spirits  with 
the  news  that  a  very  successful  action  had  been  fought 
that  morning,  "we  had  taken  back  some  trenches  on. 
the  Ypres-Comine^  Canal  that  we  lost,  a  little  while 
ago,  and  captured  about  two  hundred  prisoners;  and 
if  we  go  off  at  once  we  shall  be  in  time  to  see  the  German 
counter  attack."  The  one  impossible  thing  for  any 
woman  ever  to  have  hoped  to  see ! 

Somehow  or  other  they  very  quickly  got  to  the  very 
post  of  danger.  Soon  they  got  close  to  the  Tower  of 
Ypres,  which  Mrs.  Ward  well  describes  as  "mute  wit- 
ness of  a  crime  that  beyond  the  reparation  of  our  own 
day,  history  will  revenge  through  years  to  come."  Then 
the  English  guns  spoke,  and  they  watched  and  saw  the 
columns  of  white  smoke  rising  from  the  German  hues 
as  the  shells  burst.  The  German  lines  are  right  in  sight, 
and  soon  their  shells  begin  to  burst  on  the  Enghsh 
trenches.  The  German  counter  attack  is  on.  All  the 
famous  sites  of  the  early  part  of  the  war  are  then  in 
sight,  but  aU  they  can  fully  see  is  the  bursting  German 
shells,  as  from  moment  to  moment  they  explode. 

In  her  final  letter  Mrs.  Ward  shows  other  great  efforts 
which  Great  Britain  has  made  since  the  war  began; 


PREFACE  xxvii 

that  the  taxes  unposed  for  the  support  of  the  war  and 
cheerfully  borne  demand  a  fourth  part  of  his  income 
from  every  well-to-do  citizen;  that  five  hundred  million 
sterling,  or  twenty-five  hundred  million  dollars  have 
been  abeady  lent  by  Britain  to  her  allies,  a  colossal  por- 
tion of  her  income;  that  she  has  spent  at  the  yearly  rate 
of  three  thousand  million  dollars  on  the  army,  a  thousand 
million  dollars  on  the  navy,  while  the  munition  depart- 
ment is  costing  about  four  hundred  million  sterling,  and 
is  employing  close  upon  two  million  workers,  one-tenth,  I 
think,  women;  that  the  export  trade  of  the  country,  in 
spite  of  submarines  and  lack  of  tonnage,  is  at  this  mo- 
ment greater  than  it  was  in  the  corresponding  months 
of  1913;  she  has  raised  an  army  of  four  miUions  of  men, 
and  will  get  all  she  wants. 

What  is  more  precious  than  all  the  rest,  besides  the  vast 
amount  of  treasure  that  she  has  lavished  upon  the  war, 
besides  the  rich  mansions  in  all  parts  of  the  land  that  she 
has  devoted  to  the  uses  of  the  sick  and  the  wounded,  she 
has  given  thousands,  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
her  choicest  youth,  who  have  willingly  surrendered  their 
lives  for  the  great  cause;  young  men  of  the  noblest  pedi- 
gree, without  number,  by  their  lives  and  deaths  have 
attested  their  right  to  be  regarded  as  the  flower  of  the 
British  youth;   the  professionaj  classes  and  the  univer- 


xxviii  PREFACE 

sitles  have  emptied  their  halls  so  that  the  men  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  might  take  their  places  with  the  rest, 
and  offer  up  their  lives  as  willing  sacrifices,  and  all  the 
men  of  England  of  every  degree  have  joined  with  them 
and  been  welcomed  as  brothers  in  the  ranks  for  the 
great  sacrifice.  The  rank  and  file,  who  are  fighting 
and  dying  for  England,  are  fighting  in  the  same  spirit 
as  their  leaders  and  falling  by  the  hundred  thousand 
for  the  nation's  salvation.  How  exactly  Emerson's 
noble  verse  fits  them: 

"So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 
So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  'Thou  must,' 
The  youth  replies,  'I  can!'" 

No  one  who  reads  this  book  can  doubt  for  a  moment, 
I  think,  that  ENGLAND  HAS  DONE  ALL  SHE 
COULD,  has  put  forth  efforts  worthy  of  her  history 
and  of  her  great  traditions,  that  her  national  spirit  is 
invincible,  her  national  resources  inexhaustible,  and  that 
her  irresistible  will  to  conquer  and  to  rescue  freedom 
and  civihzation  for  all  the  world  from  this  terrible  con- 
test, is  absolutely  sure  to  win. 

All  America  is  vastly  indebted  to  Mrs.  Ward  for  her 
triumphant  success  in  proving  that  England  has  done 
her  best  and  for  making  this  great  story  so  clear. 


PREFACE  xxix 

In  this  introduction,  too  hastily  prepared  for  want  of 
time,  which  is  really  Uttle  better  than  a  synopsis  of  the 
book  itself,  I  have  not  hesitated  to  use  her  own  lan- 
guage from  beginning  to  end,  as  the  clearest  by  which 
to  express  and  condense  her  narrative,  and  with  oc- 
casional indications  by  quotation  marks. 

I  still  beheve  absolutely  that  nine-tenths  of  my  coun- 
trymen are  in  earnest  sympathy  with  the  Allies  and  are 
confident  of  their  final  and  complete  success. 

Joseph  H.  Choate. 
New  York,  May  IQth,  1916. 


Author's  Foreword 

This  little  book  was  the  outcome  of  an  urgent  call  from 
America  sent  by  various  friends  whose  whole  sympathy 
is  with  the  AUies.  I  have  done  my  best  to  meet  it,  in 
four  strenuous  months,  during  which  the  British  Gov- 
ernment has  given  me  every  possible  facility.  But  such 
work  has  to  be  done  rapidly,  and  despatched  rapidly. 
I  beg  my  friends,  and  England's  friends,  beyond  the 
Atlantic,  to  excuse  its  defects.  I  can  honestly  say, 
however,  that  I  have  done  my  best  to  get  at  the  facts, 
and  that  everything  which  is  here  put  forward  rests 
upon  independent  enquiry,  so  far  as  the  limit  of  time 
allowed. 

The  title  has  caused  me  much  trouble !  Will  any  son 
of  gallant  Scotland,  or  loyalist  Ireland,  or  of  those  great 
Dominions,  whose  share  in  the  war  has  knit  them  closer 
than  ever  to  the  Mother  Country — should  he  come  across 
this  little  book — forgive  me  that  I  have  finally  chosen 
"  England  "  to  stand  for  us  all  ?  "  Gott  strafe  England  ! " 
has  been  the  German  cry  of  hate.  I  have  given  what  I 
conceive  to  be  "England's"  reply.  "Britain" — "Great 
Britain"  are  words  that  for  all  their  profound  political 


xxxii         AUTHOR'S  FOREWORD 

significance  have  still  to  be  steeped  a  good  deal  longer 
in  life  and  literature  before  they  stir  the  same  fibres  in 
us  as  the  old  national  names.  And  "England"  as  the 
seat  of  British  Government  has,  it  is  admitted,  a  rep-' 
resentative  and  inclusive  force.  Perhaps  my  real  rea- 
son is  still  simpler.  Let  any  one  try  the  alternatives 
which  suggest  themselves,  and  see  how  they  roll — or  do 
not  roll — from  the  tongue.  He  or  she  will,  I  think,  soon 
be  reconciled  to  "England's  Effort" ! 

Mary  A.  Ward.  ^ 


NOTE  TO  THE  FOURTH  EDITION 

There  has  been  added  to  this  edition  an  epilogue  in 
the  shape  of  a  seventh  letter,  bringing  the  story  up  to 
August  16,  including  munitions,  finance,  the  battle  of 
Jutland,  and  the  Somme  offensive. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Spring-time  in  the  North  Sea — Snow  on  a  British 
Battleship Frontispiece 

7ACING 
PAGE 

Marines  drilling  on  the   quarterdeck   of  a   British 
Battleship 24 

Fifteen-inch  guns  on  a  British  Battleship 25 

A  forest  of  shells  in  a  corner  of  one  of  England's 
great  shell  filling  factories 86 

A  light  railway  bringing  up  ammunition 87 

One  of  the  wards  of  a  base  hospital,  visited  by  the 
King 132 

A  Howitzer  in  the  act  of  firing 133 


ENGLAND'S   EFFORT 


ENGLAND'S  EFFORT 
I 

Dear  H. 

Your  letter  has  found  me  in  the  midst  of 
work  quite  unconnected  with  this  hideous  war 
in  which  for  the  last  eighteen  months  we  in 
England  have  lived  and  moved  and  had  our 
being.  My  literary  profession,  indeed,  has 
been  to  me,  as  to  others,  since  August  4th, 
1914,  something  to  be  interposed  for  a  short 
time,  day  by  day,  between  a  mind  tormented 
and  obsessed  by  the  spectacle  of  war  and  the 
terrible  reality  it  could  not  otherwise  forget. 
To  take  up  one's  pen  and  lose  oneself  for  a 
while  in  memories  of  life  as  it  was  long,  long 
before  the  war — ^there  was  refreshment  and  re- 
newal in  that!  Once — last  spring — I  tried  to 
base  a  novel  on  a  striking  war  incident  which 
had  come  my  way.     Impossible!     The  zest 


4  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  pleasure  which  for  any  story-teller  goes 
with  the  first  shaping  of  a  story  died  away  at 
the  very  beginning.  For  the  day's  respite  had 
gone.  The  little  "wind-warm"  space  had  dis- 
appeared. Life  and  thought  were  all  given 
up,  without  mercy  or  relief,  to  the  fever  and 
nightmare  of  the  war.  I  fell  back  upon  my 
early  recollections  of  Oxford  thirty,  forty 
years  ago — and  it  was  like  rain  in  the  desert. 
So  that,  in  the  course  of  months  it  had  become 
a  habit  with  me  never  to  write  about  the  war; 
and  outside  the  hours  of  writing  to  think  and 
talk  of  nothing  else. 

But  your  letter  suddenly  roused  in  me  a  de- 
sire to  write  about  the  war.  It  was  partly  I 
think  because  what  you  wrote  summed  up  and 
drove  home  other  criticisms  and  appeals  of 
the  same  kind.  I  had  been  putting  them  me- 
chanically aside  as  not  having  any  special 
reference  to  me;  but  in  reality  they  had 
haunted  me.  And  now  you  make  a  personal 
appeal.  You  say  that  England  at  the  present 
moment  is   misunderstood,   and   even  hardly 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  5 

judged  in  America,  and  that  even  those  great 
newspapers  of  yours  that  are  most  friendly  to 
the  Allies  are  often  melancholy  reading  for 
those  with  English  sympathies.  Our  mistakes 
—real  and  supposed — loom  so  large.  We  are 
thought  to  be  not  taking  the  war  seriously — ■ 
even  now.  Drunkenness,  strikes,  difficulties 
in  recruiting  the  new  armies,  the  losses  of  the; 
Dardanelles  expedition,  the  failure  to  save 
Serbia  and  Montenegro,  tales  of  luxurious  ex- 
penditure in  the  private  life  of  rich  and  poor, 
and  of  waste  or  incompetence  in  military  ad-* 
ministration — these  are  made  much  of,  even 
by  our  friends,  who  grieve,  while  our  enemies 
mock.  You  say  the  French  case  has  been  on 
the  whole  much  better  presented  in  America, 
than  the  English  case;  and  you  compare  the 
international  situation  with  those  months  iq 
1863  when  it  was  necessary  for  the  Lincoln 
Government  to  make  strenuous  efforts  to  in- 
fluence and  affect  English  opinion,  which  in 
the  case  of  our  upper  classes  and  too  many  of 
our  leading  men  was  unfavourable  or  sceptical 


6  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

towards  the  North.  You  who  know  something 
of  the  vastness  of  the  English  effort  —  you 
urge  upon  me  that  English  writers  whose  work 
and  names  are  familiar  to  the  American  public 
are  bound  to  speak  for  their  country,  bound  to 
try  and  make  Americans  feel  what  we  here  feel 
through  every  nerve — ^that  cumulative  force  of 
a  great  nation,  which  has  been  slow  to  rouse, 
and  is  now  immovably — irrevocably — set  upon 
its  purpose.  "Tell  me,"  you  say  in  effect, 
"what  in  your  belief  is  the  real  spirit  of  your 
people — of  your  men  in  the  field  and  at  sea, 
of  your  workmen  and  employers  at  home,  your 
women,  your  factory  workers,  your  soldiers' 
wives,  your  women  of  the  richer  and  educated 
classes,  your  landowners  and  politicians.  Are 
you  yet  fully  awake — yet  fully  in  earnest,  in 
this  crisis  of  England's  fate?  'Weary  Titan' 
that  she  is,  with  her  age-long  history  behind 
Her,  and  her  vast  responsibilities  by  sea  and 
land,  is  she  shouldering  her  load  in  this  in- 
credible war,  as  she  must  shoulder  it;  as  her 
friends  —  the   friends    of   liberty   throughout 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  7 

the  world  —  pray  that  she  may  shoulder  it?" 
Yes !  —  I  must  answer  your  questions  —  to 
the  best  of  my  power.  I  am  no  practised  jour- 
nalist— the  days  of  my  last  articles  for  The 
Pall  Mall  under  the  "John  Morley"  of  those 
days  are  thirty  odd  years  behind  me!  But  I 
have  some  qualifications.  Ever  since — more 
than  half  a  century  ago — I  paid  my  first  child- 
ish visit  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  heard 
Mr.  Roebuck,  the  "Tear  'em"  of  Fundi  s  car- 
toon, make  his  violent  appeal  to  the  English 
Government  to  recognise  the  belligerency  of 
the  South,  it  would  be  almost  true  to  say  that 
politics  and  affairs  have  been  no  less  interest- 
ing to  me  than  literature ;  and  next  to  English 
politics,  American  politics  and  American  opin- 
ion; partly  because  of  my  early  association 
with  men  like  W.  E,  Forster,  stanch  believers, 
even  when  Gladstone  and  John  Russell  wa- 
vered, in  the  greatness  of  the  American  future 
and  the  justice  of  the  Northern  cause — and 
partly  because  of  the  warm  and  deep  impres- 
sion left  upon  me  and  mine  by  your  successive 


8  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Ambassadors  in  London,  by  Mr.  Lowell  above 
all,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Phelps,  by  the  John 
Hays,  the  Choates  and  the  Bayards — ^no  less 
than  by  the  many  intimate  friendships  with 
Americans  from  different  worlds  which  my 
books  have  brought  me  since  1888.  During 
the  last  thirty  years,  also,  I  have  had  many 
friends — and  some  kinsmen — among  the  lead- 
ers of  English  politics,  and  in  both  political 
parties.  At  the  present  moment  my  only  son 
is  a  member  of  the  English  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  a  soldier  fighting  in  the  war.  All 
my  younger  kinsfolk  are  fighting;  the  sons  of 
all  my  friends  are  fighting;  and  their  daugh- 
ters are  nursing  as  members  of  Voluntary  Aid 
Detachments — (marvellous  what  the  girl  V. 
A.  D.'s,  as  England  affectionately  calls  them, 
have  done  since  the  beginning  of  the  war!)  — 
or  working  week-end  shifts  to  relieve  munition 
workers,  or  replacing  men  of  military  age  in 
the  public  offices  and  banks.  I  live  in  one  of 
the  Home  Counties,  within  five  miles  of  one  of 
the  military  camps.    The  small  towns  near  us 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  9 

are  crowded  with  soldiers;  the  roads  are  full 
of  marching  infantry,  of  artillery-trains  and 
supply-wagons.  Our  village  has  sent  practi- 
cally all  its  able-bodied  men  of  military  age 
to  the  front;  the  few  that  remain  are  "at- 
tested" and  only  waiting  to  be  called  up.  A 
great  movement,  in  which  this  household  is 
engaged,  is  now  beginning  to  put  women  on 
the  land,  and  so  replace  the  agricultural  la- 
bourers who  have  gone  either  into  the  armies 
or  the  munition  factories.  And  meanwhile  all 
the  elderly  men  and  women  of  the  countryside 
are  sitting  on  War  Committees,  or  working 
for  the  Red  Cross.  Our  lives  are  penetrated  by 
the  war;  our  thoughts  are  never  free  from  it. 
But  in  trying  to  answer  your  questions  I 
have  gone  far  beyond  my  own  normal  experi- 
ence. I  asked  the  English  Government  to  give 
me  some  special  opportunities  of  seeing  what 
Great  Britain  is  doing  in  the  war,  and  in  mat- 
ters connected  with  the  war,  and  they  have 
given  them  ungrudgingly.  I  have  been  allowed 
to  go,  through  the  snow-storms  of  this  bitter 


10  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

winter,  to  the  far  north  and  visit  the  Fleet,  in 
those  distant  waters  where  it  keeps  guard 
night  and  day  over  England.  I  have  spent 
some  weeks  in  the  Midlands  and  the  north 
watching  the  vast  new  activity  of  the  Ministry 
of  Munitions  throughout  the  country;  and 
finally  in  a  motor  tour  of  some  five  hundred 
miles  through  the  zone  of  the  English  armies 
in  France,  I  have  been  a  spectator  not  only  of 
that  marvellous  organisation  in  northwestern 
France,  of  supplies,  reinforcements,  training 
camps  and  hospitals,  which  England  has  built 
up  in  the  course  of  eighteen  months  behind 
her  fighting  line,  but  I  have  been — on  the  fibrst 
of  two  days — within  less  than  a  mile  of  the 
fighting  line  itself,  and  on  a  second  day,  from  a 
Flemish  hill — with  a  gas  helmet  close  at  hand ! 
I  have  been  able  to  watch  a  German  counter- 
attack, after  a  successful  English  advance, 
and  have  seen  the  guns  flashing  from  the  Eng- 
lish lines,  and  the  shell-bursts  on  the  German 
trenches  along  the  Messines  ridge;  while  in 
the  far  distance,  a  black  and  jagged  ghost,  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  11 

tower  of  the  Cloth  Hall  of  Ypres  broke  fit- 
fully through  the  mists — bearing  mute  witness 
before  God  and  man.  < 

For  a  woman — a  marvellous  experience!  I 
hope  later  on  in  these  letters  to  describe  some 
of  its  details,  and  some  of  the  thoughts  awak- 
ened by  them  in  a  woman's  mind.  But  let 
me  here  keep  to  the  main  point  raised  by  your 
question  —  the  effort  of  England.  During 
these  two  months  of  strenuous  looking  and 
thinking,  of  conversation  with  soldiers  and 
sailors  and  munition  workers,  of  long  days 
spent  in  the  great  supply  bases  across  the 
Channel,  or  of  motoring  through  the  snowy 
roads  of  Normandy  and  Picardy,  I  have  natu- 
rally realised  that  effort  far  more  vividly  than 
ever  before.  It  seems  to  me — it  must  seem  to 
any  one  who  has  seriously  attempted  to  gauge 
it — amazing,  colossal.  "What  country  has 
ever  raised  over  sixty  per  cent  of  its  total  re- 
cruitable  strength,  for  service  beyond  the  seas 
in  a  few  months?"  asks  one  of  our  younger 
historians;    and  that  a  country  not  invaded. 


12  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

protected  by  the  sea,  and  by  a  supreme  fleet; 
a  country,  moreover,  without  any  form  of 
compulsory  military  service,  in  which  soldier- 
ing and  the  soldier  have  been  rather  unpopu- 
lar than  popular,  a  country  in  love  with  peace, 
and  with  no  intention  or  expectation  of  going 
to  war  with  any  one?, 

II 

For  there  we  come  to  the  root  of  everything 
— the  unpreparedness  of  England — and  what 
it  meant.  It  meant  simply  that  as  a  nation 
we  never  wished  for  war  with  Germany,  and, 
as  a  nation,  we  never  expected  it.  Our  Gov- 
ernments, of  course,  contained  men  who  saw 
more  or  less  plainly  the  dangers  ahead,  and 
had  spent  years  of  effort  in  trying  to  avoid 
them.  On  several  occasions,  during  the  last 
twenty  years,  as  we  all  remember,  a  wave  of 
sudden  anxiety  as  to  German  aims  and  inten- 
tions had  spread  through  the  thinking  por- 
tion of  the  nation — in  connection  with  South 
Africa,  with  Morocco,  with  the  Balkans.    But 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  13 

it  had  always  died  away  again.    We  know  now 
that  Germany  was  not  yet  ready !    Meanwhile 
fruitless  efforts  were  made  by  successive  Eng- 
lish Governments  to  limit  armaments,  to  pro- 
mote arbitration,  and  extend  the  scope  of  the 
Hague  Tribunal.     In  vain.     Germany  would 
have  none  of  them.    Year  by  year,  in  a  world 
of  peace  her  battle-navy  grew.      "For  what 
can  it  be  intended  but  to  attack  England?" 
said  the  alarmist.      But  how  few  of  us  be- 
lieved them !    Our  Tariff  Reformers  protested 
against  the  encroachments  of  German  trade; 
but,  outside  a  handful  of  persons  who  seemed 
to  most  of  us  fanatics,  the  emphasis  lay  always 
on  care  for  our  own  people,  and  not  on  hos- 
tility to  Germany.    Those  who  warned  us  pas- 
sionately that  Germany  meant  to  provoke  a 
struggle,  that  the  struggle  must  come,  were 
very  little  heeded.    Nobody  slept  the  worse  at 
night  for  their  harangues.     Lord  Roberts's 
agitation  for  National  Service,  based  on  the 
portentous  growth  of  the  German  Army  and 
Navy,    made    comparatively    little    way.      I 


14  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

speak  from  personal  experience  of  a  large 
Parliamentary  division.  "Did  you  foresee  it?" 
I  said  to  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  rising 
men  in  the  Navy  a  fortnight  ago.  He  thought 
a  little.  "I  always  felt  there  might  be  a  clash 
over  some  colonial  question — a  quarrel  about 
black  men.  But  a  war  between  the  white  na- 
tions over  a  European  question — that  Ger- 
many would  force  such  a  war — no,  that  I 
never  believed!"  Nor  did  any  of  us — except 
those  few — those  very  few  persons,  who  Cas- 
sandra-like, saw  the  coming  horror  plainly, 
and  spoke  to  a  deaf  country. 

"There  was  no  hatred  of  Germany  in  this 
country" — I  quote  a  Cabinet  Minister.  "Even 
in  those  parts  of  the  country  which  had  most 
reason  to  feel  the  trade  rivalry  of  Germany, 
there  was  no  thought  of  war,  no  wish  for  war !" 
It  came  upon  England  like  one  of  those  sud- 
den spates  through  mountain  clefts  in  spring, 
that  fall  with  havoc  on  the  plains  beneath. 
After  such  days  of  wrestling  for  European 
peace  as  have  left  their  indelible  mark  upon 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  15 

every  member  of  the  English  Cabinet  which 
declared  war  on  August  4th,  1914,  we  fought 
because  we  must,  because,  in  Luther's  words, 
we  "could  no  other." 

What  is  the  proof  of  this — the  proof  which 
history  will  accept  as  final — against  the  vain 
and  lying  pleas  of  Germany? 

Nothing  less  than  the  whole  history  of  the 
past  eighteen  months! — beginning  with  that 
initial  lack  of  realisation,  and  those  harassing 
difficulties  of  organisation  with  which  we  are 
now  so  often  and  so  ignorantly  reproached. 
At  the  word  "Belgium"  on  August  4th,  prac- 
tically the  whole  English  nation  fell  into  line. 
We  felt  no  doubts — we  knew  what  we  had  to 
do.  But  the  problem  was  how  to  do  it.  Out- 
side the  Navy  and  the  Expeditionary  Force, 
both  of  them  ready  to  the  last  gun  and  button, 
we  had  neither  men  nor  equipment  equal  to 
the  fighting  of  a  Continental  war,  and  we  knew 
it.  The  fact  is  more  than  our  justification — 
it  is  our  glory.  If  we  had  meant  war,  as  Ger- 
many still   hoarsely  but  more   faintly  says, 


16  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

week  after  week,  to  a  world  that  listens  no 
longer,  could  any  nation  of  sane  men  have  be- 
haved as  we  did  in  the  years  before  the  war? 
— 233,000  men  on  active  service — and  263,000 
Territorials,  against  Germany's  millions! — 
with  arsenals  and  equipment  to  match.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  the  country — our  untouched, 
iminvaded  country — safe  as  it  believed  itself 
to  be  under  the  protection  of  its  invincible 
Navy,  was,  in  some  sections  of  our  population 
at  any  rate,  slow  to  realise  the  enormous  task 
to  which — for  the  faith  of  treaties'  sake,  for 
self-defence's  sake — it  was  committed? 

And  yet — ^was  it  after  all  so  slow?  The 
day  after  war  was  declared  the  Prime  Min- 
ister asked  Parliament  to  authorise  the  addi- 
tion of  half  a  million  of  men  to  the  Army, 
and  a  first  war  credit  of  a  hundred  millions  of 
money  (five  hundred  million  dollars).  The 
first  hundred  thousand  men  came  rolling  up 
into  the  great  military  centres  within  a  few 
days.  By  September  4th  nearly  three  hundred 
thousand  fresh  men  had  enlisted — ^by  Christ- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  17 

mas  half  a  million.  By  May,  a  million  men 
had  been  added  to  the  new  Armies;  by  Sep- 
tember, 1915,  Sir  John  French  alone  had  under 
his  command  close  on  a  million  men  on  the 
lines  in  France  and  Flanders,  and  in  Decem- 
ber, 1915,  the  addition  of  another  million  men 
to  the  Army  was  voted  by  Parliament,  bring- 
ing up  the  British  military  strength  to  ap- 
proximately four  millions,  excluding  Colo- 
nials. And  what  of  the  Dominions?  By 
November,  1915,  Canada  and  Australia  alone 
had  sent  us  forces  more  than  equal  to  the  whole 
of  that  original  Expeditionary  Force,  that 
"contemptible  little  army"  which,  broken  and 
strained  as  it  was  by  the  sheer  weight  and 
fierceness  of  the  German  advance,  yet  held  the 
gates  of  the  Channel  till  England  could  fling 
her  fresh  troops  into  the  field,  and  France — 
admirable  France! — had  recovered  from  the 
first  onslaught  of  her  terrible  and  ruthless 
enemy. 

In  one  of  my  later  letters  I  hope  to  give  some 
particulars  of  this  first  rush  of  men,  gathered 


18  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

from  those  who  witnessed  it  and  took  part  in  it. 
One  remarkable  point  in  connection  with  it  is 
that  those  districts  most  heavily  employed  in 
munition-making  and  coal-mining,  the  two  in- 
dustries absolutely  indispensable  to  our  Army 
and  Navy,  have  also  sent  the  largest  supply  of 
men  to  the  fighting  line — take,  for  instance, 
Newcastle  and  the  Clyde.  There  have  been 
anxious  episodes,  of  course,  in  the  great  de- 
velopment. Was  your  own  vast  levy  in  the 
jCivil  War  without  them?  And  for  the  last 
half  million  men,  we  have  had  to  resort,  as 
Lincoln  resorted,  to  a  modified  form  of  com- 
pulsion. There  was,  no  doubt,  a  good  deal  of 
unnecessary  waste  and  overlapping  in  the  first 
camp  and  billeting  organization  of  the  enor- 
mous forces  raised.  But  when  all  is  said,  did 
we  not,  in  the  language  of  a  French  observer 
"improvise  the  impossible"? — and  have  we  not 
good  reason  to  be  proud? — not  with  any  fool- 
ish vainglory,  but  with  the  sober  and  resolute 
pride  of  a  great  nation,  conscious  of  its  pa,st. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  19 

determined  to  correct  its  mistakes,  and  looking 
open-eyed  and  fearless  towards  the  future? 

Then  as  to  munitions:  in  many  ways,  as 
you  will  perhaps  say,  and  as  I  agree,  a  tragic 
story.  If  we  had  possessed  last  spring  the 
ammunition- — both  for  ourselves  and  our  allies 
we  now  possess,  the  war  would  have  gone  dif- 
ferently. Drunkenness,  trade-union  difficul- 
ties, a  small — very  small — revolutionary  ele- 
ment among  our  work  people — all  these  have 
made  trouble.  But  the  real  cause  of  our 
shortage  lay  in  the  fact  that  no  one,  outside 
Germany,  realised  till  far  into  the  war,  what 
the  ammunition  needs — the  absolutely  unpre- 
cedented needs — of  this  struggle  were  going 
to  be.  It  was  the  second  Battle  of  Ypres  at 
the  end  of  April  last  year  which  burnt  them 
into  the  English  mind.  We  paid  for  the  grim 
knowledge  in  thousands  of  our  noblest  lives. 
But  since  then? 

In  a  later  letter  I  propose  to  draw  some  pic- 
ture in  detail  of  the  really  marvellous  move- 
ment which  since  last  July,  under  the  impulse 


20  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

given  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  has  covered  Eng- 
land with  new  munition  factories  and  added 
enormously  to  the  producing  power  of  the  old 
and  famous  firms,  has  drawn  in  an  army  of 
women — now  reckoned  at  something  over  a 
quarter  of  a  million — and  is  at  this  moment 
not  only  providing  amply  for  our  own  armies, 
but  is  helping  those  of  the  Allies  against  those 
final  days  of  settlement  with  Germany  which 
we  believe  to  be  now  steadily  approaching. 
American  industry  and  enterprise  have  helped 
us  substantially  in  this  field  of  munitions.  We 
are  gratefully  conscious  of  it.  But  England 
is  now  fast  overtaking  her  own  needs. 

More  of  this  presently.  Meanwhile  to  the 
military  and  equipment  effort  of  the  country, 
you  have  to  add  the  financial  effort — some- 
thing like  $7,500,000,000,  already  expended 
on  the  war;  the  organising  effort,  exempli- 
fied in  the  wonderful  "back  of  the  army"  in 
France,  which  I  hope  to  describe  to  you;  and 
the  vast  hospital  system,  with  all  its  scientific 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  21 

adjuncts,  and  its  constantly  advancing  effi- 
ciency. 

And  at  the  foundation  of  it  all — the  human 
and  personal  effort ! — the  lives  given  for  Eng- 
land, the  blood  so  generously  shed  for  her, 
the  homes  that  have  sacrificed  their  all,  our 
"golden  lads"  from  all  quarters  and  classes, 
whose  young  bodies  lie  mingled  with  an  alien 
dust  that  "is  for  ever  England,"  since  they 
sleep  there  and  hallow  it;  our  mothers  who 
mourn  the  death  or  the  wreck  of  the  splen- 
did sons  they  reared;  our  widowed  wives  and 
fatherless  children.  And  this,  in  a  quarrel 
which  only  very  slowly  our  people  have  come 
to  feel  as  in  very  deed  their  own.  At  first  we 
thought  most  often  and  most  vividly  of  Bel- 
gium, of  the  broken  treaty,  and  of  France,  so 
wantonly  attacked,  whose  people  no  English 
man  or  woman  could  ever  have  looked  in  the 
face  again,  had  we  forsaken  her.  Then  came 
the  hammer  blows  that  forged  our  will — Lou- 
vain,  Aerschot,  Rheims,  the  air-raids  on  our 
defenceless  to^vns,  the  senseless  murder  of  our 


22  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

women  and  children,  the  Bryce  report,  the 
JLusitarda,  the  execution  of  Edith  Cavell — the 
whole  stupefying  revelation  of  the  German 
hatred  and  greed  towards  this  country,  and  of 
the  qualities  latent  in  the  German  character. 
Now  we  know — ^that  it  is  they,  or  we — since 
they  willed  it  so.  And  this  old,  illogical,  un- 
ready country  is  only  just  arriving  at  its  full 
strength,  only  just  fully  conscious  of  the  stern- 
ness of  its  own  resolve,  only  just  putting  out 
its  full  powers,  as  the  German  power  is  weak- 
ening, and  the  omens  are  changing — ^both  in 
East  and  West. 

Ill 

No! — ^the  effort  of  England  during  the  past 
eighteen  months  in  spite  of  all  temporary  ebbs 
and  difficulties,  in  spite  of  that  chorus  of  self- 
blame  in  which  the  English  nation  delights, 
has  been  one  of  the  great  things  in  the  history 
of  our  country.  We  have  "improvised  the 
impossible"  in  every  direction — hut  one. 

In  one  point,  indeed,  there  has  been  no  im- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  23 

provisation.  Nothing  was  trusted  to  chance. 
What  is  it  that  alone  has  secured  us  the  time 
to  make  the  effort  we  have  made? 

It  is  now  about  a  month  ago  that,  by  per- 
mission of  the  Admiralty,  I  found  myself 
driving  towards  a  certain  pier  in  a  harbour 
opening  on  the  North  Sea.  The  Commodore 
of  a  Cruiser  Squadron  was  to  send  his  boat 
for  me,  and  I  was  to  lunch  with  him  on  board 
his  Flag-ship.  I  duly  passed  the  distrustful 
sentry  on  the  road  leading  to  the  pier,  arrived 
at  the  pier-head  and  descended  from  the  mo- 
tor which  had  brought  me.  The  morning  was 
mistily  sunny,  and  the  pier  strangely  deserted. 
.Where  was  the  boat?  Where  was  my  friend 
who  had  hoped  to  come  for  me  himself?  No 
signs  of  either.  The  few  old  sailors  employed 
about  the  pier  looked  at  me  in  astonishment, 
and  shook  their  heads  when  I  inquired.  Com- 
modore   's  boat  was  not  there;    no  boat 

had  been  in  that  morning  from  the  ships.  I 
took  the  Commodore's  letter  from  my  hand- 
bag, to  assure  myself  I  had  not  been  dream- 


24t  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ng,  and  reread  it  in  perplexity.  No  dates 
could  be  clearer — no  directions  more  precise. 
Suddenly  I  perceive  one  tall  naval  officer  on 
the  pier.  "Can  you  help  me,  sir?"  And  I 
hand  him  the  Commodore's  letter.  He  looks 
at  me — and  at  the  letter.  His  face  twinkles 
with  repressed  laughter;  and  I  laugh,  too, 
beginning  to  understand.  "Very  sorry,"  says 
the  charming  young  man,  "but  I  think  I  can 
assure  you  there  will  be  no  boat,  and  it  is  no 

use  your  waiting.     Commodore went  to 

sea  last  night." 

I  thanked  him,  and  we  laughed  together. 
Then  I  walked  up  the  pier  a  little  way,  seeing 
a  movement  in  the  mist.  A  sailor  came  up  to 
me.  "They  all  went  to  sea  last  night,"  he  said 
in  my  ear — "and  there  are  the  slow  ones  com- 
ing back!"  And  out  of  the  mist  came  the 
black  shapes  of  war- ships,  moving  majesti- 
cally up  the  harbour — one  might  have  fancied, 
with  a  kind  of  injured  dignity,  because  their 
unreasonable  fellows  had  been  faster  and  had 
gone  farther  afield  than  they. 


I'^^mB  ^ 


c/ 


Q 


pq 


M 


O 


fe 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  25 

I  walked  back  to  my  motor,  disappointed 
indeed,  and  yet  exulting.  It  was  good  to  real- 
ise personally  through  this  small  incident,  the 
mobility  and  ever-readiness  of  the  Fleet — the 
absolute  insignificance — non-existence  even — 
of  any  civilian  or  shore  interest,  for  the  Navy 
at  its  work.  It  was  not  till  a  week  later  that 
I  received  an  amusing  and  mysterious  line 

from  Commodore ,  the  most  courteous  of 

men. 

IV 

By  the  time  it  reached  me,  however,  I  was 
on  the  shores  of  a  harbour  in  the  far  north 
"visiting  the  Fleet,"  indeed,  and  on  the  invi- 
tation of  England's  most  famous  sailor.  Let 
me  be  quite  modest  about  it.  Not  for  me  the 
rough  waters,  or  the  thunderous  gun-prac- 
tice— 

"Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides" — 

which  I  see  described  in  the  letters  of  the  Rus- 
sian or  American  journalists  who  have  been 
allowed  to  visit  the  Grand  Fleet.     There  had 


26  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

been  some  talk,  I  understand,  of  sending  me 
out  in  a  destroyer;  it  was  mercifully  aban- 
doned. All  the  same,  I  must  firmly  pat  on 
record  that  mine  was  "a  visit  to  the  Fleet,"  by 
Admiralty  permission,  for  the  purpose  of  these 
letters  to  you,  and  through  you  to  the  Ameri- 
can public,  and  that  I  seem  to  have  been  so 
far  the  only  woman  who,  for  newspaper  ends, 
has  been  allowed  to  penetrate  those  mysterious 
northern  limits  where  I  spent  two  wonderful 
days. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  Wintry  visit.  The  whole 
land  was  covered  with  snow.  The  train  could 
hardly  drag  itself  through  the  choked  High- 
land defiles;  and  it  was  hours  behind  its 
time  when  we  arrived  at  a  long-expected  sta- 
tion, and  a  Vice- Admiral  looking  at  me  with 
friendly,  keen  eyes  came  to  the  carriage  to 
greet  me.  "My  boat  shall  meet  you  at  the  pier 
with  my  Flag-Lieutenant  to-morrow  morn- 
ing. You  will  pick  me  up  at  the  Flag-ship, 
and  I  will  take  you  round  the  Fleet.  You 
will  lunch  with  me,  I  hope,  afterwards."     I 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  27 

tried  to  show  my  grateful  sense  both  of  the 
interest  and  the  humour  of  the  situation.  My 
kind  visitor  disappeared,  and  the  train  carried 
me  on  a  few  miles  farther  to  my  destination 
for  the  night. 

And  here  I  take  a  few  words  from  a  journal 
written  at  the  time: 

It  is  nearly  dawn.  A  red  light  in  the  northeast  is  com- 
ing up  over  the  snowy  hills.  The  water,  steely  grey — 
the  tide  rising.  What  strange  moving  bodies  are  those, 
scudding  along  over  the  dim  surface,  like  the  ghosts  of 
sea  planes  ?  Dense  flocks  of  duck  apparently,  rising  and 
falling  along  the  shallows  of  the  shore.  Now  they  are 
gone.  Nothing  moves.  The  morning  is  calm,  and  the 
water  still.  And  on  it  lie,  first  a  cruiser  squadron,  and 
then  a  line  of  Dreadnoughts  stretching  out  of  sight.  No 
lights  anjrwhere,  except  the  green  lights  on  a  hospital 
ship  far  away.  The  great  ships  lie  dark  and  silent,  and 
I  sit  and  watch  them,  in  the  cold  dawn,  thinking  that  but 
for  them,  and  the  multitude  of  their  comrades  that  guard 
these  seas  and  shores,  England  would  be  as  Belgium  or 
as  Northern  France,  ravaged  and  destroyed  by  a  bar- 
barian enemy.  My  heart  goes  out  to  you,  great  ships, 
and  you,  gallant  unwearied  men,  who  keep  your  watch 
upon  them !  That  watch  has  been  kept  for  generations. 
Never  has  there  been  such  need  for  it  as  now.  .    .    . 

But  the  day  has  risen,  and  the  sun  with  it. 
As  I  leave  the  shore  in  the  Vice- Admiral's 


28  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

boat,  the  sunlight  comes  dancing  over  a  low 
line  of  hill,  lighting  up  the  harbour,  the  mighty 
ships,  with  their  guns,  and,  scattered  out  to 
sea  along  the  distance,  the  destroyers,  the 
trawlers,  the  mine-sweepers,  the  small  auxil- 
iary craft  of  all  kinds — those  "fringes  of  the 
fleet" — which  Kipling  has  caught  and  photo- 
graphed as  none  but  he  can. 

The  barge  stops  beside  the  Flag-ship,  and 
the  Admiral  descends  into  it.  What  is  the 
stamp,  the  peculia?r  stamp  that  these  naval 
men  bear? — as  of  a  force  trained  and  disci- 
plined to  its  utmost  capacity,  and  then  held 
lightly  in  check — till  wanted.  You  see  it  in 
so  many  of  their  faces,  even  in  eyes  hollow  for 
want  of  sleep.  It  is  always  there — the  same 
strength,  the  same  self-control,  the  same  hu- 
manity. Is  it  produced  by  the  testing  weight 
of  responsibility,  the  silent  sense  of  ever- 
present  danger,  both  from  the  forces  of  nature 
and  the  enmity  of  man,  the  high,  scientific 
training,  and  last  but  not  least,  that  marvel- 
lous comradeship  of  the  Navy,  whether  be- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  29 

tween  officer  and  officer,  or  between  officers 
and  men,  which  is  constantly  present  indeed 
in  the  Army,  but  is  necessarily  closer  and  more 
intimate  here,  in  the  confined  world  of  the 
ship,  where  all  live  together  day  after  day, 
and  week  after  week,  and  where — if  disaster 
comes — all  may  perish  together? 

But  on  this  bright  winter  morning,  as  we 
pass  under  and  round  the  ships,  and  the  Ad- 
miral points  out  what  a  landswoman  can  un- 
derstand, in  the  equipment  and  the  power 
of  these  famous  monsters  with  their  pointing 
guns,  there  was  for  the  moment  no  thought 
of  the  perils  of  the  Navy,  but  only  of  the  glory 
of  it.  And  afterwards  in  the  Admiral's  pleas- 
ant drawing-room  on  board  the  Flag-ship, 
with  its  gathering  of  naval  officers.  Admirals, 
Captains,  Commanders,  how  good  the  talk 
was !  Not  a  shade  of  boasting — no  mere  abuse 
of  Germany — rather  a  quiet  regret  for  the 
days  when  German  and  English  naval  men 
were  friends  throughout  the  harbours  of  the 
world.     "Von  Spee  was  a  very  good  fellow — 


30  ENGLAND^S    EFFORT 

I  knew  him  well — and  his  two  sons  who  went 
down  with  him,"  says  an  Admiral  gently.  "I 
was  at  Kiel  the  month  before  the  war.  I  know 
that  many  of  their  men  must  loathe  the  work 
they  are  set  to  do."  "The  point  is,"  says  a 
younger  man,  broad  -  shouldered,  with  the 
strong  face  of  a  leader,  "that  they  are  always 
fouling  the  seas,  and  we  are  always  cleaning 
them  up.  Let  the  neutrals  understand  that! 
It  is  not  we  who  strew  the  open  waters  with 
mines  for  the  slaughter  of  any  passing  ship, 
and  then  call  it  'maintaining  the  freedom  of 
the  seas.'  And  as  to  their  general  strategy, 
their  Higher  Command — "  he  throws  back  his 
head  with  a  quiet  laugh — and  I  listen  to  a 
rapid  sketch  of  what  the  Germans  might  have 
done,  have  never  done,  and  what  it  is  now 
much  too  late  to  do,  which  I  will  not  repeat. 
Type  after  type  comes  back  to  me: — the 
courteous  Flag-Lieutenant,  who  is  always 
looking  after  his  Admiral,  whether  in  these 
brief  harbour  rests,  or  in  the  clash  and  dark- 
ness of  the  high  seas — the  Lieutenant-Com- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  31 

manders  whose  destroyers  are  the  watch-dogs, 
the  ceaseless  protectors,  no  less  than  the  eyes 
and  ears  of  the  Fleet — 'the  Flag-Captain,  who 
takes  me  through  the  great  ship,  with  his  vigi- 
lant, spare  face,  and  his  understanding,  kindly 
talk  about  his  men;  many  of  whom  on  this 
Thursday  afternoon — the  quasi  half-holiday 
of  the  Fleet  when  in  harbour — are  snatching 
an  hour's  sleep  when  and  where  they  can. 
That  sleep-abstinence  of  the  Navy  —  sleep, 
controlled,  measured  out,  reduced  to  a  bare 
minimum,  among  thousands  of  men,  that  we 
on  shore  may  sleep  our  fill — look  at  the  signs 
of  it,  in  the  eyes  both  of  these  officers,  and 
of  the  sailors  crowding  the  "liberty"  boats, 
which  are  just  bringing  them  back  from  their 
short  two  hours'  leave  on  shore! 

Another  gathering,  in  the  Captain's  room, 
for  tea.  The  talk  turns  on  a  certain  popular 
play  dealing  with  naval  life,  and  a  Comman- 
der describes  how  the  manuscript  of  it  had 
been  brought  to  him,  and  how  he  had  revelled 
in  the  cutting  out  of  all  the  sentimentalisms. 


32  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Two  men  in  the  play — friends — going  into 
action — shake  hands  with  each  other  "with 
tears  in  their  eyes."  A  shout  of  derisive  laugh- 
ter goes  up  from  the  tea-table.  But  they  ad- 
mit "talking  shop"  off  duty.  "That's  the 
difference  between  us  and  the  Army."  And 
what  shop  it  is !  I  listen  to  two  young  officers, 
both  commanding  destroyers,  describing — one, 
his  adventures  in  dirty  weather  the  night  be- 
fore, on  patrol  duty.  "My  hat,  I  thought 
one  moment  the  ship  was  on  the  rocks  I  You 
couldn't  see  a  yard  for  the  snow — and  the  sea 
— beastly  r  The  other  had  been  on  one  of  Ad- 
miral Hood's  monitors,  when  they  suddenly 
loomed  out  of  the  mist  on  the  Belgian  coast, 
and  the  German  army  marching  along  the 
coast  road  to  Dunkirk  and  Calais  marched  no 
more,  but  lay  in  broken  fragments  behind  the 
dunes,  or  any  shelter  available,  till  the  flood- 
ing of  the  dikes  farther  south  completed  the 
hopeless  defeat  which  Admiral  Hood's  guns 
had  begun. 

Then  the  talk  ranges  round  the  blockade, 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  33 

the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  patrol  work, 
the  complaints  of  neutrals.     "America  should 
understand  us.      Their  blockade  hit  us  hard 
enough  in  the  Civil  War.    And  we  are  fight- 
ing for  their  ideals   no   less  than   our  own. 
When   has   our  naval   supremacy   ever   hurt 
them?     Mayn't  they  be  glad  of  it  some  day? 
What  about  a  fellow  called  Monroe!" — so  it 
runs.    Then  its  tone  changes  insensibly.    From 
a  few  words  dropped  I  realise  with  a  start 
where    these    pleasantly    chatting    men    had 
probably  been  only  two  or  three  days  before, 
where  they  would  probably  be  again  on  the 
morrow.    Some  one  opens  a  map,  and  I  listen 
to  talk  which,  in  spite  of  its  official  reticence, 
throws  many  a  light  on  the  vast  range  of  Eng- 
land's naval  power,  and  the  number  of  her 
ships.    "Will  they  come  out?    When  will  they 
come   out?"      The   question   runs   round   the 
group.     Some  one  tells  a  story  of  a  German 
naval  prisoner  taken  not  long  ago  in  the  North 
Sea,  and  of  his  remark  to  his  captors:   "Yes, 


34  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

we're  beaten — we  know  that — ^but  we'll  make 
it  hell  for  you  before  we  give  in!" 

For  that  final  clash — that  Armageddon  that 
all  think  must  come,  our  sailors  wait,  not  de- 
spising their  enemy,  knowing  very  well  that 
they — the  Fleet — are  the  pivot  of  the  situa- 
tion, that  without  the  British  Navy,  not  all 
the  valour  of  the  Allies  in  France  or  Russia 
could  win  the  war,  and  that  with  it,  Germany's 
hope  of  victory  is  vain.  While  the  Navy  lives, 
England  lives,  and  Germany's  vision  of  a 
world  governed  by  the  ruthless  will  of  the 
scientific  soldier  is  doomed. 

Meanwhile,  what  has  Germany  been  doing 
in  her  shipyards  all  this  time?  No  one  knows, 
but  my  hosts  are  well  aware  that  we  shall 
know  some  day. 

As  to  England — here  is  Mr.  Balfour  mov- 
ing the  Naval  Estimates  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons— the  "token  votes"  which  tell  nothing 
that  should  not  be  told.  But  since  the  war  be- 
gan, says  the  First  Lord,  we  have  added  "one 
million"  to  the  tonnage  of  the  Navy,  and  we 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  35 

have  doubled  its  personnel.  We  are  adding 
more  every  day ;  for  the  Admiralty  are  always 
"wanting  more."  We  are  quite  conscious  of 
our  defects — in  the  Air  Service  first  and  fore- 
most. But  they  will  be  supplied.  There  is 
a  mighty  movement  afoot  in  the  workshops 
of  England — an  effort  which,  when  all  draw- 
backs are  allowed  for,  has  behind  it  a  free 
people's  will. 

In  my  next  letter  I  propose  to  take  you 
through  some  of  these  workshops.  "We  get 
the  most  extraordinary  letters  from  America," 
writes  one  of  my  correspondents,  a  steel  manu- 
facturer in  the  Midlands.  "What  do  they 
think  we  are  about?"  An  American  letter  is 
quoted.  "So  you  are  still,  in  England,  taking 
the  war  lying  down?" 

Are  we?    Let  us  see. 


II 

Dear  H. 

In  this  second  letter  I  am  to  try  and  prove 
to  you  that  England  is  not  taking  the  war 
"lying  down." 

Let  me  then  give  you  some  account — an  eye- 
witness's account — of  what  there  is  now  to  be 
seen  by  the  ordinary  intelligent  observer  in  the 
"Munition  Areas,"  as  the  public  has  learned 
to  call  them,  of  England  and  Scotland.  That 
great  spectacle,  as  it  exists  to-day — so  inspir- 
ing in  what  it  immediately  suggests  of  human 
energy  and  human  ingenuity,  so  appalling  in 
its  wider  implications — testifies,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  the  fierce  stiffening  of  England's 
resolve  to  win  the  war,  and  to  win  it  at  a  less- 
ened cost  in  life  and  suffering  to  our  men 
in  the  field,  which  ran  through  the  nation, 
after  the  second  Battle  of  Ypres,  towards  the 
close  of  April,  1915.  That  battle,  together 
with  the  disagreement  between  Mr.  Winston 

36 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  3T 

Churchill  and  Lord  Fisher  at  the  Admiralty, 
had,  as  we  all  know,  momentous  consequences. 
The  two  events  brought  the  national  dissatis- 
faction and  disappointment  with  the  general 
course  of  the  spring  fighting  to  a  head.  By 
May  19th  the  Ministry  which  had  declared  the 
war  and  so  far  conducted  it,  had  disappeared; 
a  National  or  Coalition  Ministry,  drawn  from 
the  leading  men  of  both  parties,  reigned  in  its 
stead.  The  statement  made  by  ^Ir.  Asquith, 
as  late,  alack,  as  April  20,  1915,  that  there 
was  "no  truth  in  the  statement"  that  our  ef- 
forts at  the  front  "were  being  crippled  or  at 
any  rate  hampered"  by  want  of  ammunition, 
was  seen  almost  immediately,  in  the  bitter 
light  of  events,  to  be  due  to  some  fatal  mis- 
conceptions, or  mis  judgments,  on  the  part  of 
those  informing  the  Prime  Minister,  which 
the  nation  in  its  own  interests  and  those  of  its 
allies,  could  only  peremptorily  sweep  away. 
A  new  Ministry  was  created — the  Ministry  of 
Munitions,  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  placed 
at  its  head. 


38  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

The  work  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  his 
Ministry — now  employing  vast  new  buildings, 
and  a  staff  running  into  thousands — ^liave  done 
since  June,  1915,  is  nothing  less  than  colossal. 
Much  no  doubt  had  been  done  earlier  for 
which  the  new  Ministry  has  perhaps  unjustly 
got  the  credit,  and  not  all  has  been  smooth 
sailing  since.  One  hears,  of  course,  criticism 
and  complaints.  What  vast  and  effective  stir, 
for  a  great  end,  was  ever  made  in  the  world 
without  them? 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  incurred  a  certain 
amount  of  unpopularity  among  the  working 
classes,  who  formerly  adored  him.  In  my  be- 
lief he  has  incurred  it  for  the  country's  sake, 
and  those  sections  of  the  working  class  who 
have  smarted  under  his  criticisms  most  bitterly 
>vill  forgive  him  when  the  time  comes.  In  his 
passionate  determination  to  get  the  thing  done, 
he  has  sometimes  let  his  theme — of  the  national 
need,  and  the  insignificance  of  all  things  else 
in  comparison  with  it — carry  him  into  a  vehe- 
mence which  the  workmen  have  resented,  and 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  39 

which  foreign  or  neutral  countries  have  mis- 
understood. 

He  found  in  his  path,  which  was  also  the 
nation's  path,  three  great  foes — drunkenness, 
the  old  envenomed  quarrel  between  employer 
and  employed,  and  that  deep-rooted  industrial 
conservatism  of  England,  which  shows  itself 
on  the  one  hand  in  the  trade-union  customs 
and  restrictions  of  the  working  class,  built  up, 
as  they  hold,  through  long  years,  for  the  pro- 
tection of  their  own  standards  of  life,  and,  on 
the  other,  in  the  slowness  of  many  of  the 
smaller  English  employers  (I  am  astonished, 
however,  at  the  notable  exceptions  every- 
where!) to  realise  new  needs  and  processes, 
and  to  adapt  themselves  to  them.  Could  any 
one  have  made  such  an  omelet  without  break- 
ing a  great  many  eggs?  Is  it  wonderful  that 
the  employers  have  sometimes  felt  themselves 
unbearably  hustled,  sometimes  misunderstood, 
and  at  other  times  annoyed,  or  worried  by 
what  seems  to  them  the  red  tape  of  the  new 


40  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Ministry,    and    its    apparent   multiplicity    of 
forms  and  inquiries? 

Men  accustomed  to  conduct  their  own  busi- 
nesses with  the  usual  independence  of  regula- 
tion have  been  obliged  to  submit  to  regulation. 
Workmen  accustomed  to  defend  certain  meth- 
ods of  work  and  certain  customs  of  their  trade 
as  matters  of  life  and  death  have  had  to  see' 
them  jeopardised  or  swept  away.  The  resto- 
ration of  these  methods  and  customs  is  sol- 
emnly promised  them  after  the  war ;  but  mean- 
while they  become  the  servants  of  a  public  de- 
partment almost  as  much  under  orders  as  the 
soldier  himself.  They  are  asked  to  admit  un- 
skilled men  to  the  skilled  processes  over  which 
they  have  long  kept  so  jealous  a  guard;  above 
all,  they  are  asked  to  assent  wholesale  to  the 
employment  of  women  in  trades  where  women 
have  never  been  employed  before,  where  it  is 
obvious  that  their  introduction  taps  an  im- 
mense reservoir  of  new  labour,  and  equally 
obvious  that,  once  let  in,  they  are  not  going 
to  be  easily  or  wholly  dislodged. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  41 

Of  course,  there  has  been  friction  and  diffi- 
culty; nor  is  it  all  yet  at  an  end.  In  the  few 
danger-spots  of  the  country,  where  heads  are 
hottest,  where  thousands  of  the  men  of  most 
natural  weight  and  influence  are  away  fight- 
ing, and  where  among  a  small  minority  hatred 
of  the  capitalist  deadens  national  feeling  and 
obscures  the  national  danger,  there  have  been 
anxious  moments  during  the  winter ;  there  may 
possibly  be  some  anxious  moments  again. 

But,  after  all,  how  little  it  amounts  to  in 
comparison  with  the  enormous  achievement! 
It  took  us  nine  months  to  realise  what  France 
n — which,  remember,  is  a  Continental  nation 
ynder  conscription — had  realised  after  the 
Battle  of  the  Marne,  when  she  set  every  hand 
;in  the  country  to  work  at  munitions  that  could 
be  set  to  work.  With  us,  whose  villages  were 
unravaged,  whose  normal  life  was  untouched, 
realisation  was  inevitably  slower.  Again  we 
were  unprepared,  and  again,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Army  itself,  we  may  plead  that  we  have 
"improvised   the   impossible."     "No   nation," 


42  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

saj^s  Mr.  Buchan,  "can  be  adequately  pre« 
pared,  unless,  like  Germany,  it  intends  war; 
and  Britain,  like  France  paid  the  penalty  of 
hei*  honest  desire  for  peace!" 

Moreover,  we  had  our  Navy  to  work  for, 
without  which  the  cause  of  the  Allies  would 
have  gone  under,  must  have  gone  under,  at  the 
first  shock  of  Germany.  What  the  workmen 
of  England  did  in  the  first  year  of  the  war 
in  her  docks  and  shipyards,  history  will  tell 
some  day. 

"What's  wrong  with  the  men!"  cried  a 
Glasgow  employer  indignantly  to  me,  one 
evening  as,  quite  unknown  the  one  to  the 
other,  we  were  nearing  one  of  the  towns  on 
the  Clyde.  "What  was  done  on  the  Clyde,  in 
the  first  months  of  the  war,  should  never  be 
forgotten  by  this  country.  Working  from  six 
to  nine  every  day  till  they  dropped  with 
fatigue — and  Sundays,  too — drinking  just  to 
keep  themselves  going — too  tired  to  eat  or 
sleep — that's  what  it  was — I  saw  it!" 

I,  too,  have  seen  that  utter  fatigue  stamped 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  43 

on  a  certain  percentage  of  faces  through  the 
ISIidlands,  or  the  districts  of  the  Tyne  and  the 
Clyde — fatigue  which  is  yet  indomitable,  which 
never  gives  way.  How  fresh,  beside  that  look, 
are  the  faces  of  the  women,  for  whom  work- 
shop life  is  new!  In  its  presence  one  forgets 
all  hostile  criticism,  all  talk  of  strikes  and 
drink,  of  trade-union  difficulties,  and  the  end- 
less worries  of  the  employers. 

The  English  workman  is  not  tractable  ma- 
terial— far  from  it — and  he  is  not  imagina- 
tive; except  in  the  persons  of  some  of  his 
chosen  leaders,  he  has  never   seen   a  ruined 
French  or  Flemish  village,  and  he  was  slow 
to  realise  the  bitterness  of  that  silence  of  the 
guns  on  the  front,   when   ammimition   runs 
short,  and  lives  must  pay.    But  he  has  sent  his 
hundreds  of  thousands  to  the  fighting  line; 
there  are  a  million  and  a  half  of  him  now  work- 
ing at  munitions,  and  it  is  he,  in  a  comradeship 
with  the  brain  workers,  the  scientific  intelli- 
gence of  the  nation,  closer  than  any  he  has 
yet  known,  and  lately,  with  the  new  and  aston- 


44  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ishing  help  of  women — it  is  he,  after  all,  who 
is  "delivering  the  goods,"  he  who  is  now  piling 
the  great  arsenals  and  private  works  with  guns 
and  shells,  with  bombs,  rifles,  and  machine- 
guns,  he  who  is  working  night  and  day  in  the 
shipyards,  he  who  is  teaching  the  rising  army 
of  women  their  work,  and  making  new  and 
firm  friends,  through  the  national  emergency, 
whether  in  the  trenches  or  the  workshops,  with 
other  classes  and  types  in  the  nation,  hitherto 
little  known  to  him,  to  whom  he,  too,  is  per- 
haps a  revelation. 

There  will  be  a  new  wind  blowing  through 
England  when  this  war  is  done.  Not  only 
will  the  scientific  intelligence,  the  general  edu- 
cation, and  the  industrial  plant  of  the  nation 
have  gained  enormously  from  this  huge  impe- 
tus of  war;  but  men  and  women,  employers 
and  employed,  shaken  perforce  out  of  their 
old  grooves,  will  look  at  each  other  surely  with 
new  eyes,  in  a  world  which  has  not  been  steeped 
for  nothing  in  effort  and  sacrifice,  in  common 
griefs  and  a  common  passion  of  will. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  45 

II 

All  over  England,  then,  the  same  quadruple 
process  has  now  been  going  on  for  months : 

The  steady  enlargement  of  existing  arma- 
ment and  munition  works,  national  or  private. 

The  transformation  of  a  host  of  other  engi- 
neering businesses  into  munition  works. 

The  co-ordination  of  a  vast  number  of  small 
workshops  dealing  with  the  innimierable  metal 
industries  of  ordinary  commerce,  so  as  to  make 
them  feed  the  larger  engineering  works,  with 
all  those  minor  parts  of  the  gun  or  shell,  which 
such  shops  had  the  power  to  make. 

The  putting  up  of  entirely  new  workshops 
— National  Workshops — directly  controlled  by 
the  new  Ministry,  under  the  Munitions  Acts. 

Let  me  take  you  through  a  few  typical 
scenes. 

It  was  on  February  1st,  the  day  after  the 
Zeppelin  raid  of  January  31st,  that  I  left  a 
house  in  the  north  where  I  had  been  seeing  one 
of  the  country-house  convalescent  hospitals,  to 


46  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

which  Englishwomen  and  English  wealth  are 
giving  themselves  everywhere  without  stint, 
and  made  my  way  by  train,  through  a  dark  and 
murky  afternoon,  towards  a  Midland  town. 
The  news  of  the  raid  was  so  far  vague.  The 
newspapers  of  the  morning  gave  no  names  or 
details.  I  was  not  aware  that  I  was  passing 
through  towns  where  women  and  children  in 
back  streets  had  been  cruelly  and  wantonly 
killed  the  night  before,  where  a  brewery  had 
been  bombed,  and  the  windows  of  a  train 
broken,  in  order  that  the  German  public  might 
be  fed  on  ridiculous  lies  about  the  destruction 
of  Liverpool  docks  and  the  wrecking  of  "Eng- 
lish industry."  "English  industry  lies  in 
ruins,"  said  the  Hamburger  Nachrichten  com- 
placently. Marvellous  paper!  Just  after 
reading  its  remarks,  I  was  driving  down  the 
streets  of  the  great  industrial  centre  I  had 
come  to  see — a  town  which  the  murderers  of 
the  night  before  would  have  been  glad  indeed 
to  hit.  As  it  was,  "English  industry"  seemed 
tolerably  active  amid  its  "ruins."    The  clumsy; 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  47 

falsehoods  of  the  German  official  reports  and 
the  German  newspapers  affect  me  strangely! 
It  is  not  so  much  their  lack  of  truth  as  their 
lack  of  the  ironic,  the  satiric  sense,  which  is 
a  certain  protection,  after  all,  even  amid  the 
tragedy  of  war.  We  have  a  tolerable  British 
conceit  of  ourselves,  no  doubt,  and  in  war  we 
make  foolish  or  boasting  statements  about  the 
future,  because,  in  spite  of  all  our  grumbling, 
we  are  at  bottom  a  nation  of  optimists,  and 
apt  to  see  things  as  we  wish.  But  this  sturdy 
or  fatuous  lying  about  the  past — the  "sink- 
ing" of  the  JLion,  the  "capture"  of  Fort  Vaux, 
or  the  "bombardment"  of  Liverpool  docks — 
is  really  beyond  us.  Our  sense  of  ridicule,  if 
nothing  else,  forbids — the  instinct  of  an  old 
people  with  an  old  and  humourous  literature. 
These  leading  articles  of  the  Hamburger 
NacTirichten,  the  sermons  of  German  pastors, 
and  those  amazing  manifestoes  of  German 
professors,  flying  straight  in  the  face  of  his- 
toric documents — "scraps  of  paper" — which 
are  there,  none  the  less,  to  all  time — for  us, 


48  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

these  things  are  only  not  comic  because,  to  the 
spiritual  eye,  they  are  written  in  blood.  But 
to  return  to  the  "ruins,"  and  this  "English  in- 
dustry" which  during  the  last  six  months  has 
taken  on  so  grim  an  aspect  for  Germany. 

My  guide,  an  official  of  the  Ministry,  stops 
the  motor,  and  we  turn  down  a  newly  made 
road,  leading  towards  a  mass  of  spreading 
building  on  the  left. 

"A  year  ago,"  says  my  companion — "this 
was  all  green  fields.  Now  the  company  is  em- 
ploying, instead  of  3,500  work-people,  about 
three  times  the  number,  of  whom  a  large  pro- 
portion are  women.  Its  output  has  been  quad- 
rupled, and  the  experiment  of  introducing 
women  has  been  a  complete  success." 

We  pass  up  a  fine  oak  staircase  to  the  new 
offices,  and  I  am  soon  listening  to  the  report 
of  the  works  superintendent.  A  spare,  power- 
ful man  with  the  eyes  of  one  in  whom  life 
burns  fast,  he  leans,  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
against  the  wall  of  his  office,  talking  easily 
and  well.     He  himself  has  not  had  a  day's 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  49 

holiday  for  ten  months,  never  sleeping  more 
than  five  and  a  half  hours,  with  the  telephone 
a,t  his  bedhead,  and  waking  to  instant  work 
when  the  moment  for  waking  comes.  His 
view  of  his  workmen  is  critical.  It  is  the  view 
of  one  consumed  with  "realisation,"  face  to 
face  with  those  who  don't  "realise."  "But  the 
raid  will  do  a  deal  of  good,"  he  says  cheerfully. 

"As  to  the  women!" — he  throws  up  his 
hands — "they're  saving  the  country.  They 
don't  mind  what  they  do.  Hours?  They 
work  ten  and  a  half  or,  with  overtime,  twelve 
hours  a  day,  seven  days  a  week.  At  least, 
that's  what  they'd  like  to  do.  The  Govern- 
ment are  insisting  on  one  Sunday — or  two 
Sundays — a  month  off.  I  don't  say  they're 
not  right.  But  the  women  resent  it.  'We're 
not  tired!'  they  say.  And  you  look  at  them! 
— they're  not  tired. 

"If  I  go  down  to  the  shed  and  say:  'Girls! 
— there's  a  bit  of  work  the  Government  are 
pushing  for — they  say  they  must  have — can 
you  get  it  done?'  Why,  they'll  stay  and  get 


50  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

it  done,  and  then  pour  out  of  the  works,  laugh- 
ing and  singing.  I  can  tell  you  of  a  surgical- 
dressing  factory  near  here,  where  for  nearly  a 
j^ear  the  women  never  had  a  holiday.  They 
simply  wouldn't  take  one.  'And  what'll  our 
men  at  the  front  do,  if  we  go  holiday-making?* 

"Last  night"  (the  night  of  the  Zeppelin 
raid)  "the  warning  came  to  put  out  lights. 
We  daren't  send  them  home.  They  sat  in  the 
dark  among  the  machines,  singing,  'Keep  the 
home  fires  burning,'  'Tipperary,'  and  the  like. 
I  tell  you,  it  made  one  a  bit  choky  to  hear 
them.  They  were  thinking  of  their  sweet- 
hearts and  husbands  I'll  be  bound! — not  of 
themselves." 

In  another  minute  or  two  we  were  walking 
through  the  new  workshops.  Often  as  I  have 
now  seen  this  sight,  so  new  to  England,  of  a 
great  engineering  workshop  filled  with  women, 
it  stirs  me  at  the  twentieth  time  little  less  than 
it  did  at  first.  These  girls  and  women  of  the 
Midlands  and  the  north,  are  a  young  and 
comely  race.    Their  slight  or  rounded  figures 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  51 

among  the  forest  of  machines,  the  fair  or 
golden  hair  of  so  many  of  them,  their  grace 
of  movement,  bring  a  strange  touch  of  beauty 
into  a  scene  which  has  already  its  own  spell. 

Muirhead  Bone  and  Joseph  Pennell  have 
shown  us  what  can  be  done  in  art  with  these 
high  workshops,  with  their  intricate  distances 
and  the  endless  crisscross  of  their  belting,  and 
their  ranged  machines.  But  the  coming  in  of 
the  girls,  in  their  close  khaki  caps  and  overalls, 
showing  the  many  pretty  heads  and  slender 
necks,  and  the  rows  of  light  bending  forms, 
spaced  in  order  beside  their  furnaces  or  lathes 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  has  added  a  new 
element — something  flower-like,  to  all  this 
flash  of  fire  and  steel,  and  to  the  grimness  of 
war  underlying  it. 

For  the  final  meaning  of  it  all  is  neither  soft 
nor  feminine!  These  girls — at  hot  haste — 
are  making  fuses  and  cartridge-cases  by  the 
hundred  thousand,  casting,  pressing,  drawing, 
and,  in  the  special  danger-buildings,  filling 
certain  parts  of  the  fuse  with  explosive.  There, 


62  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

were  about  4,000  of  them  to  5,000  men,  when 
I  saw  the  shop,  and  their  number  has  no  doubt 
increased  since ;  for  the  latest  figures  show  that 
about  15,000  fresh  women  workers  are  going 
into  the  munition  works  every  week.  The  men 
are  steadily  training  them,  and  without  the 
teaching  and  co-operation  of  the  men — ^with- 
out, that  is,  the  surrender  by  the  men  of  some 
of  their  most  cherished  trade  customs — the 
whole  movement  would  have  been  impossible. 
As  it  is,  by  the  sheer  body  of  work  the 
women  have  brought  in,  by  the  deftness,  en- 
ergy, and  enthusiasm  they  throw  into  the  sim- 
pier  but  quite  indispensable  processes,  thereby 
setting  the  unskilled  man  free  for  the  Army, 
and  the  skilled  man  for  work  which  women 
cannot  do.  Great  Britain  has  become  possessed 
of  new  and  vast  resources  of  which  she  scarcely 
dreamed  a  year  ago;  and  so  far  as  this  war  is 
a  war  of  machinery — and  we  all  know  what 
Germany's  arsenals  have  done  to  make  it  so — 
its  whole  aspect  is  now  changing  for  us.  The 
"eternal  feminine"  has  made  one  more  start- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  53 

ling  incursion  upon  the  normal  web  of  things! 

But  on  the  "dilution"  of  labour,  the  burn- 
ing question  of  the  hour,  I  shall  have  some- 
thing to  say  in  my  next  letter.  Let  me  record 
another  visit  of  the  same  day  to  a  small-arms 
factory  of  importance.  Not  many  women 
here  so  far,  though  the  number  is  increasing, 
but  look  at  the  expansion  figures  since  last 
summer!  A  large,  new  factory  added,  on  a 
bare  field;  40,000  tons  of  excavation  removed, 
two  miles  of  new  shops,  sixty  feet  wide  and 
four  floors  high,  the  output  in  rifles  quadru- 
pled, and  so  on. 

We  climbed  to  the  top  floor  of  the  new 
buildings  and  looked  far  and  wide  over  the 
town.  Dotted  over  the  tall  roofs  rose  the 
national  flags,  marking  "controlled"  factories, 
I.  e.,  factories  still  given  over  a  year  ago  to  one 
or  other  of  the  miscellaneous  metal  trades  of 
the  Midlands,  and  now  making  fuse  or  shell 
for  England's  Armies,  and  under  the  control 
of  the  British  Government.  One  had  a  sud- 
den sharp  sense  of  the  town's  corporate  life, 


54  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  of  the  spirit  working  in  it  everywhere  for 
England's  victory.  Before  we  descended,  we 
watched  the  testing  of  a  particular  gun.  I  was 
to  hear  its  note  on  the  actual  battle-field  a 
month  later. 

An  afternoon  train  takes  me  on  to  another 
great  town,  with  some  very  ancient  institu- 
tions, which  have  done  very  modern  service  in 
the  war.  I  spent  my  evening  in  talking  with 
my  host,  a  steel  manufacturer  identified  with 
the  life  of  the  city,  but  serving  also  on  one 
of  the  central  committees  of  the  Ministry  in 
London.  Labour  and  politics,  the  chances  of 
the  war,  America  and  American  feeling  to- 
wards us,  the  task  of  the  new  Minister  of 
Munitions,  the  temper  of  English  and  Scotch 
workmen,  the  flux  into  which  all  manufactur- 
ing conditions  have  been  thrown  by  the  war, 
and  how  far  old  landmarks  can  be  restored 
after  it — we  talked  hard  on  these  and  many 
other  topics,  till  I  must  break  it  off — unwill- 
ingly!— ^to  get  some  sleep  and  write  some 
notes. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  55 

Next  day  took  me  deep  into  the  very  cen- 
tral current  of  "England's  Effort" — so  far  as 
this  great  phase  of  it  at  any  rate  is  concerned. 
In  this  town,  even  more  than  in  the  city  I  had 
just  left,  one  felt  the  throb  of  the  nation's  ris- 
ing power,  concentrated,  orderly,  determined. 
Every  single  engineering  business  in  a  town 
of  engineers  was  working  for  the  war.  Every 
manufacturer  of  any  importance  was  doing  his 
best  for  the  Government,  some  in  connection 
with  the  new  Ministry,  some  with  the  Ad- 
miralty, some  with  the  War  Office.  As  for 
the  leading  firms  of  the  city,  the  record  of 
growth,  of  a  mounting  energy  by  day  and 
night,  was  nothing  short  of  bewildering.  Take 
these  few  impressions  of  a  long  day,  as  they 
come  back  to  me. 

First,  a  great  steel  warehouse,  full  of  raw 
steel  of  many  sorts  and  kinds,  bayonet  steel, 
rifle  steel,  shell  steel,  stacked  in  every  avail- 
able corner  and  against  every  possible  wall — 
all  sold,  every  bit  of  it,  and  ready  to  be  shipped 
— some  to  the  Colonies,  some  to  our  Allies, 


56  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

with  peremptory  orders  coming  in  as  to  which 
the  harassed  head  of  the  firm  could  only  shake 
his  head  with  a  despairing  "impossible !" 

Then  some  hours  in  a  famous  works,  under 
the  guidance  of  the  managing  director,  one  of 
those  men,  shrewd,  indefatigable,  humane,  in 
whose  company  one  learns  what  it  is,  in  spite 
of  all  our  supposed  deficiencies,  that  makes 
the  secret  of  England's  industrial  tenacity.  An 
elderly  Scotcliman,  very  plainly  marked  by 
the  labour  and  strain  of  the  preceding  eighteen 
months,  but  still  steadily  keeping  his  head  and 
his  temper,  showing  the  signs  of  an  Evangel- 
ical tradition  in  his  strong  dislike  for  Sunday 
work,  his  evident  care  for  his  work-people — 
men  and  women — and  his  just  and  sympa- 
thetic tone  towards  the  labour  with  which  he 
has  to  deal — such  is  my  companion. 

He  has  a  wonderful  story  to  tell:  "In  Sep- 
tember, 1914,  we  were  called  upon  to  manu- 
facture a  large  extra  number  of  field-guns. 
We  had  neither  buildings  nor  machinery  for 
the  order.     However,  we  set  to  work.     We 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  57 

took  down  seven  dwelling-houses;  in  three 
weeks  we  were  whitewashing  the  walls  of  our 
new^  workshop  and  laying  in  the  machinery. 
My  idea  was  to  make  so  many  guns.  The 
Government  asked  for  four  times  as  many. 
So  we  took  down  more  houses,  and  built  an- 
other much  larger  shop.  The  work  was  fin- 
ished in  ten  weeks.  Five  other  large  work- 
shops were  put  up  last  year,  all  built  with 
lightning  speed,  and  everywhere  additions  have 
been  made  to  the  machinery  in  every  depart- 
ment wherever  it  was  possible  to  put  ma- 
chines." 

As  to  their  thousands  of  workmen,  Mr.  C, 
has  no  complaints  to  make. 

"They  have  been  steadily  working  anything 
from  60  to  80  hours  per  week;  the  average  is 
64.29  hours  per  week,  and  the  average  time 
lost  only  3.51  per  cent.  A  little  while  ago,  a 
certain  union  put  forward  a  claim  for  an  ad- 
vance in  wages.  We  had  to  decline  it,  but  as 
the  meeting  came  to  an  end,  the  trade-union 
secretary  said: 


58  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

"  *Of  course,  we  are  disappointed,  and  we 
shall  no  doubt  return  to  the  matter  again.  But 
whether  you  concede  the  advance  of  wages  or 
not,  our  members  will  continue  to  do  their 
level  best,  believing  that  they  are  not  only 
working  for  themselves,  but  helping  the  Gov- 
ernment and  helping  our  soldiers  to  wage  this 
war  to  a  successful  conclusion.' " 

And  the  manager  adds  his  belief  that  this  is 
the  spirit  which  prevails  "among  the  work- 
people generally." 

Before  we  plunge  into  the  main  works, 
however,  my  guide  takes  me  to  see  a  recent 
venture,  organised  since  the  war,  in  which  he 
clearly  takes  a  special  interest.  An  old  ware- 
house bought,  so  to  speak,  overnight,  and 
equipped  next  morning,  has  been  turned  into 
a  small  workshop  for  shell  production — em- 
ploying between  three  and  four  hundred  girls, 
with  the  number  of  skilled  men  necessary  to 
keep  the  new  unskilled  labour  going.  These 
girls  are  working  on  the  eight  hours'  shift  sys- 
tem; and  working  so  well  that  a  not  uncom- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  59 

mon  wage  among  them — on  piece-work,  of 
course — runs  to  somewhere  between  two  and 
three  pounds  a  week. 

"But  there  is  much  more  than  money  in  it," 
says  the  kind-faced  woman  superintendent,  as 
we  step  into  her  little  office  out  of  the  noise, 
to  talk  a  little.  "The  girls  are  perfectly  aware 
that  they  are  'doing  their  bit,'  that  they  are 
standing  by  their  men  in  the  trenches." 

This  testimonj^  indeed  is  universal.  There 
is  patriotism  in  this  grim  work,  and  affection, 
and  a  new  and  honourable  self-consciousness. 
Girls  and  women  look  up  and  smile  as  a  visitor 
passes.  They  presume  that  he  or  she  is  there 
for  some  useful  purpose  connected  with  the 
war,  and  their  expression  seems  to  say:  "Yes, 
we  are  all  in  it! — we  know  very  well  what  "uce 
are  doing,  and  what  a  difference  we  are  mak- 
ing.   Go  and  tell  our  boys  .  .  ." 

The  interest  of  this  workshop  lay,  of  course, 
in  the  fact  that  it  was  a  sample  of  innumerable 
others,  as  quickly  organised  and  as  efficiently 
worked,  now  spreading  over  the  Midlands  and 


60  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

the  north.  As  to  the  main  works  belonging  to 
the  same  great  firm,  such  things  have  been  often 
described;  but  one  sees  them  to-day  with  new 
eyes,  as  part  of  a  struggle  which  is  one  with 
the  very  life  of  England.  Acres  and  acres  of 
ground  covered  by  huge  workshops  new  and 
old,  by  interlacing  railway  lines  and  moving 
trolleys.  Gone  is  all  the  vast  miscellaneous 
engineering  work  of  peace.  The  war  has  swal- 
lowed everything. 

I  have  a  vision  of  a  great  building,  where 
huge  naval  guns  are  being  lowered  from  the 
annealing  furnace  above  into  the  hardening 
oil-tank  below,  or  where  in  the  depths  of  a 
great  pit,  with  lights  and  men  moving  at  the 
bottom,  I  see  as  I  stoop  over  the  edge,  a  jacket 
being  shrunk  upon  another  similar  monster, 
hanging  perpendicularly  below  me. 

Close  by  are  the  forging-shops  whence  come 
the  howitzers  and  the  huge  naval  shells. 
Watch  the  giant  pincers  that  lift  the  red- 
hot  ingots  and  drop  them  into  the  stamping 
presses.     Man  directs;  but  one  might  think 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  61 

tlie  tools  themselves  intelligent,  like  those 
golden  automata  of  old  that  HephcTstus  made, 
to  rmi  and  wait  upon  the  gods  of  Olympus. 
Down  drops  the  punch.  There  is  a  burst  of 
flame,  as  though  the  molten  steel  rebelled,  and 
out  comes  the  shell  or  the  howitzer  in  the 
rough,  nosed  and  hollowed,  and  ready  for  the 
turning. 

The  men  here  are  great,  powerful  fellows, 
blanched  with  heat  and  labour :  amid  the  flame 
and  smoke  of  the  forges  one  sees  them  as  typ- 
ical figures  in  the  national  struggle,  linked  to 
those  Dreadnoughts  in  the  Xorth  Sea,  and 
to  those  lines  in  Flanders  and  Picardy  where 
Britain  holds  her  enemy  at  bay.  Everpvliere 
the  same  intensity  of  effort,  whether  in  the  men 
or  in  those  directing  them.  And  what  deli- 
cate and  responsible  processes! 

In  the  next  shop,  with  its  rows  of  shining 
guns.  I  stop  to  look  at  a  great  gun  apparently 
turning  itself.  Xo  workman  is  visible  for  the 
moment.  The  process  goes  on  automatically, 
the  bright  steel  emerging  imder  the  tool  that 


62  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

here,  too,  seems  alive.  Close  to  it  is  a  man 
winding  steel  wire,  or  rather  braid,  on  a  15- 
inch  gun;  beyond  again  there  are  workmen  and 
inspectors  testing  and  gauging  another  similar 
giant.  Look  down  this  shining  tube  and  watch 
the  gauging,  now  with  callipers,  now  with  a 
rubber  device  which  takes  the  impression  of 
the  rifling  and  reveals  any  defect.  The  gaug- 
ing turns  upon  the  ten-thousandth  part  of  an 
inch,  and  any  mistake  or  flaw  may  mean  the 
lives  of  men.  .  .  . 

We  turn  out  into  a  pale  sunshine.  The 
morning  work  is  over,  and  the  men  are  troop- 
ing into  the  canteens  for  dinner — and  we  look 
in  a  moment  to  see  for  ourselves  how  good  a 
meal  it  is.  At  luncheon,  afterwards,  in  the 
Directors'  Offices,  I  am  able  to  talk  with  the 
leading  citizens  of  the  great  town. 

One  of  them  writes  some  careful  notes  for 
me.  Their  report  of  labour  conditions  is  ex- 
cellent. "No  organised  strikes  and  few  cessa- 
tions of  work  to  report.  Overtime  is  being 
freely  worked.    Little  or  no  drunkenness,  and 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  68 

that  at  a  time  when  the  average  earnings  of 
many  classes  of  workmen  are  two  or  three 
times  above  the  normal  level.  The  methods 
introduced  in  the  twenty  years  before  the  war 
— conference  and  discussion — ^have  practically 
settled  all  difficulties  between  employers  and 
employed,  in  these  parts  at  any  rate,  during 
this  time  of  England's  trial." 

After  luncheon  we  diverge  to  pay  another 
all  too  brief  visit  to  a  well-known  firm.  The 
managing  director  gives  me  some  wonderful 
figures  of  a  new  shell  factory  they  are  just  put- 
ting up.  It  was  begun  in  September,  1915. 
Since  then  2,000  tons  of  steelwork  has  been 
erected,  and  200  out  of  1,200  machines  re- 
quired have  beei;i  received  and  fixed.  Four 
thousand  to  5,000  hands  will  be  ultimately 
employed. 

All  the  actual  production  off  the  machines 
will  be  done  by  women — and  this,  although  the 
works  are  intended  for  a  heavy  class  of  shell, 
60-pounder  high  explosive.  Women  are  al- 
ready showing  their  capacity — helped  by  me- 


64  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

chanical  devices — to  deal  with  this  large  type 
of  shell ;  and  the  workshop  when  in  full  work- 
ing order  is  intended  for  an  output  of  a  million 
shell  per  annum. 

I  drive  on,  overshadowed  by  these  figures. 
*'Per  annum!"  The  little  common  words 
haunt  the  ear  intolerably.  Surely  before  one 
more  year  is  over,  this  horror  under  which 
we  live  will  be  lifted  from  Europe  I  Britain, 
a  victorious  Britain,  will  be  at  peace,  and 
women's  hands  will  have  something  else  to  do 
than  making  high-explosive  shell.  But,  mean- 
while, there  is  no  other  way.  The  country's 
call  has  gone  out,  clear  and  stern,  and  her 
daughters  are  coming  in  their  thousands  to 
meet  it,  from  loom  and  house  and  shop. 

A  little  later,  in  a  great  board-room,  I  find 
the  Munitions  Committee  gathered.  Its  func- 
tion, of  course,  is  to  help  the  new  Ministry  in 
organising  the  war  work  of  the  town.  In  the 
case  of  the  larger  firms,  the  committee  has 
been  chiefly  busy  in  trying  to  replace  labour 
withdrawn  by  the  war.     It  has  been  getting 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  65 

skilled  men  back  from  the  trenches,  and  ad- 
vising the  Ministry  as  to  the  "badging"  of 
munition  workers.  It  has  itself,  through  its 
command  of  certain  scientific  workshops,  been 
manufacturing  gauges  and  testing  materials. 

It  has  turned  the  electroplate  workshops  of 
the  town  on  to  making  steel  helmets,  and  in 
general  has  been  "working  in"  the  smaller 
engineering  concerns  so  as  to  make  them  feed 
the  larger  ones.  This  process  here,  as  every- 
where, is  a  very  educating  one.  The  shops 
employed  on  bicycle  and  ordinary  motor  work 
have,  as  a  rule,  little  idea  of  the  extreme  accu- 
racy required  in  munition  work.  The  idea  of 
working  to  the  thousandth  of  an  inch  seems  to 
them  absurd;  but  they  have  to  learn  to  work 
to  the  ten- thousandth,  and  beyond!  The  war 
will  leave  behind  it  greatly  raised  standards 
of  work  in  England ! — that  every  one  agrees. 

And  I  carry  away  with  me  as  a  last  remem- 
brance of  this  great  town  and  its  activities  two 
recollections — one  of  a  university  man  doing 
some  highly  skilled  work  on  a  particularly  fine 


iB6  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

gauge:  "If  you  ask  me  what  I  have  been 
doing  for  the  last  few  weeks,  I  can  only  tell 
you  that  I  have  been  working  like  a  nigger 
and  have  done  nothing!  Patience! — ^that's  all 
there  is  to  say."  And  another  of  a  "trans- 
formed" shop  of  moderate  size,  where  an  active 
and  able  man,  after  giving  up  the  whole  of  his 
ordinary  business,  has  thrown  himself  into  the 
provision,  within  his  powers,  of  the  most  press- 
ing war  needs,  as  he  came  across  them. 

In  July  last  year,  for  instance,  munitions 
work  in  many  quarters  was  actually  held  up 
for  want  of  gauges.  Mr.  D.  made  something 
like  10,000,  to  the  great  assistance  of  certain 
new  Government  shops.  Then  the  Govern- 
ment asked  for  a  particular  kind  of  gun.  Mr. 
D.  undertook  1,000,  and  has  already  delivered 
400.  Tools  for  shell-making  are  everywhere 
wanted  in  the  rush  of  the  huge  demand.  Mr. 
D.  has  been  making  them  diligently.  This  is 
Ijust  one  example  among  hundreds  of  how  a 
great  industry  is  adapting  itself  to  the  fiery 
needs  of  war. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  67 

But  the  dark  has  come,  and  I  must  catch 
my  train.  As  I  speed  through  a  vast  industrial 
district  I  find  in  the  evening  papers  hideous 
details  of  the  Zeppelin  raid,  which  give  a  pe- 
culiar passion  and  poignancy  to  my  recollec- 
tions of  a  crowded  day — and  peculiar  interest, 
also,  to  the  talk  of  an  able  representative  of 
the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  who  is  travelling 
with  me,  and  endeavouring  to  give  me  a  con- 
nected view  of  the  whole  new  organisation. 
As  he  speaks,  my  thoughts  travel  to  the  Eng- 
lish battle-line,  to  the  trenches  and  casualty 
clearing-stations  behind  it,  to  distant  Russia; 
and  I  think  of  the  Prime  Minister's  statement 
in  Parliament — that  the  supply  of  munitions, 
for  all  its  marvellous  increase,  is  not  yet  equal 
to  the  demand.  New  shops,  new  workers,  new 
efforts — England  is  producing  them  now  un- 
ceasingly, she  must  go  on  producing  them. 
There  must  be  no  pause  or  slackening.  There 
will  be  none. 

I  am  going  now  to  see — after  the  Midlands 


68  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

— what  the  English  and  Scotch  north  is  doing 
to  swell  the  stream.  And  in  my  next  letter 
there  will  be  plenty  to  say  about  "Dilution" 
of  labour,  about  wages,  and  drink,  and  some 
-other  burning  topics  of  the  moment. 


Ill 

Deae  H. 

It  is  now  three  months  since  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  made  his  startling  speech,  as  Muni- 
tions Minister,  in  the  House  of  Commons  in 
which,  as  he  wound  up  his  review  of  his  new 
department,  he  declared:  "Unless  we  quicken 
our  movements,  damnation  will  fall  on  the 
sacred  cause  for  which  so  much  gallant  blood 
has  flowed!"  The  passion  of  this  peroration 
was  like  the  fret  of  a  river  in  flood  chafing  at 
some  obstacle  in  its  course.  Generally  speak- 
ing, the  obstacle  gives  way.  In  this  case  Mr. 
George's  obstacle  had  begim  to  give  way  long 
before  December  21st — ^the  date  of  the  speech. 
The  flood  had  been  pushing  at  it  with  increas- 
ing force  since  the  foundation  of  the  Ministry 
of  Munitions  in  the  preceding  summer.  But 
the  crumbling  process  was  not  quick  enough 
for  Great  Britain's  needs,  or  for  the  energy  of 
her  Minister. 


70  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Hence  the  outspoken  speech  of  December 
21st,  supported  by  Mr.  Asquith's  grave  words 
of  a  few  weeks  later.  "We  cannot  go  on," 
said  the  Prime  Minister  in  effect,  "depending 
upon  foreign  countries  for  our  munitions.  We 
haven't  the  ships  to  spare  to  bring  them  home, 
and  the  cost  is  too  gi'eat.  We  must  make  them 
ourselves."  "Yes — and  qnicherr  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  had  already  said,  with  a  sharp  empha- 
sis, meant  to  "hustle"  that  portion  of  the  na- 
tion which  still  required  hustling;  overpainting 
his  picture,  no  doubt,  but  with  quite  legitimate 
rhetoric,  in  order  to  produce  his  effect. 

The  result  of  that  fresh  "hustling"  was  the 
appointment  of  the  Dilution  Commissioners,  a 
second  Munitions  Act  amending  the  first,  and 
a  vast  expansion  all  over  the  country  of  the 
organisation  which  had  seemed  so  vast  before. 
It  was  not  till  midwinter,  in  the  very  midst  of 
the  new  and  immense  effort  I  have  been  de- 
scribing, that  the  Minister  of  Munitions  and 
those  working  with  him  convinced  themselves 
that,  without  another  resolute  push,  the  bar- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  71 

rier  across  the  stream  of  the  nation's  will  might 
still  fatally  hold  it  back.  More  and  more  men 
were  wanted  every  week — in  the  Army  and  the 
workshops — and  there  were  not  men  to  go 
round.  The  second  push  had  to  be  given — 
it  was  given — and  it  still  firmly  persists. 

In  the  spring  of  1915,  the  executives  of  the 
leading  trade-unions  had  promised  the  Gov- 
ernment the  relaxation  of  their  trade  rules  for 
the  period  of  the  war.  Many  of  the  trade- 
union  leaders — Mr.  Barnes,  Mr.  Henderson, 
Mr.  Hodge,  and  many  others — have  worked 
magnificently  in  this  sense,  and  many  unions 
have  been  thoroughly  loyal  throughout  their 
ranks  to  the  pledge  given  in  their  name.  The 
iron-moulders,  the  shipwrights,  the  brasswork- 
ers  may  be  specially  mentioned.  But  in  the 
trades  mostly  concerned  with  ammunition, 
there  were  certain  places  and  areas  where  the 
men  themselves,  as  distinct  from  their  respon- 
sible leaders,  offered  a  dogged,  though  often 
disguised  resistance.  Personally,  I  think  that 
any  one  at  all  accustomed  to  try  and  lo^'^k  at 


72  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

labour  questions  from  the  point  of  view  of 
labour  will  understand  the  men  while  heartily 
sympathising  with  the  Minister,  who  was 
determined  to  get  "the  goods"  and  has  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  them.  Here,  in  talking  of 
"the  men"  I  except  that  small  revolutionary 
element  among  them  which  has  no  country, 
and  exists  in  all  countries.  And  I  except,  too, 
instances  which  certainly  are  to  be  found, 
though  rarely,  of  what  one  might  call  a  purely 
mean  and  overreaching  temper  on  the  part 
of  workmen — taking  advantage  of  the  nation's 
need,  as  some  of  the  less  responsible  employers 
have  no  doubt,  also,  taken  advantage  of  it. 
But,  in  general,  it  seems  to  me,  there  has  been 
an  honest  struggle  in  the  minds  of  thousands 
of  workmen  between  what  appears  to  them  the 
necessary  protection  of  their  standards  of  life 
— laboriously  attained  through  long  effort — 
and  the  call  of  the  war.  And  that  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  the  workmen  concerned 
with  munitions  should  have  patriotically  and 
triumphantly   decided  this   struggle   as   they 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  73 

have — under  pressure,  no  doubt,  but  under  no 
such  pressure  as  exists  in  a  conscripted,  still 
more  in  an  invaded,  nation — may  rank,  I 
think,  when  all  is  said,  with  the  raising  of  our 
voluntary  Armies  as  another  striking  chapter 
in  the  book  of  England's  Effort. 

In  this  chapter,  then,  Dilution  will  always 
take  a  leading  place. 

What  is  Dilution? 

It  means,  of  course,  that  under  the  sharp 
analysis  of  necessity  much  engineering  work, 
generally  reckoned  as  "skilled"  work,  and  re- 
served to  "skilled"  workmen,  by  a  number  of 
union  regulations,  is  seen  to  be  capable  of  so- 
lution into  various  processes,  some  of  which 
can  be  sorted  out  from  the  others  as  within 
the  capacity  of  the  unskilled  or  semiskilled 
worker.  By  so  dividing  them  up,  and  using 
the  superior  labour  with  economy,  only  where 
it  is  really  necessary,  it  can  be  made  to  go  in- 
finitely further;  and  the  inferior  or  untrained 
labour  can  then  be  brought  into  work  where 


74  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

nobody  supposed  it  could  be  used,  where,  in 
fact,  it  never  has  been  used. 

Obvious  enough,  perhaps.  But  the  idea  had 
to  be  applied  in  haste  to  living  people — em- 
ployers, many  of  whom  shrank  from  reorgan- 
ising their  workshops  and  changing  all  their 
methods  at  a  moment's  notice;  and  workmen 
looking  forward  with  consternation  to  being 
outnumbered,  by  ten  to  one,  in  their  own 
workshops,  by  women.  When  I  was  in  the 
Midlands  and  the  North,  at  the  end  of  Janu- 
ary and  in  early  February,  Dilution  was  still 
an  unsettled  question  in  some  of  the  most 
important  districts.  One  of  the  greatest  em- 
ployers in  the  country  writes  to  me  to-day 
(March  24) :  "Since  January,  we  have  passed 
through  several  critical  moments,  but,  even- 
tually, the  principle  was  accepted,  and  Dilu- 
tion is  being  introduced  as  fast  as  convenient. 
For  this  we  have  largely  to  thank  an  admira- 
ble Commission  (Sir  Croydon  Marks,  Mr. 
Barnes,  and  Mr.  Shackleton)  which  was  sent 
down  to  interview  employers  and  employed. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  75 

iTheir  tact  and  acumen  were  remarkable. 
Speaking  personally,  I  cannot  help  believing 
that  there  is  a  better  understanding  between 
masters  and  men  now  than  has  existed  in  my 
memory." 

A  great  achievement  that! — for  both  em- 
ployers and  employed — for  the  Minister  also 
who  appointed  the  Commission  and  thus  set 
the  huge  stone  rolling  yet  another  leap  upon 
its  way. 

It  will  be  readily  seen  how  much  depends 
also  on  the  tact  of  the  individual  employer. 
That  employer  has  constantly  done  best  who 
has  called  his  men  into  council  with  him,  and 
thrown  himself  on  their  patriotism  and  good 
sense.  I  take  the  following  passage  from  an 
interesting  report  by  a  very  shrewd  observer,* 
printed  in  one  of  the  northern  newspapers. 
It  describes  an  employer  as  saying: 

I  was  told  by  the  Ministry  that  I  should  have  to  double 
my  output.  Labour  was  scarce  and  I  consulted  a  depu- 
tation of  the  men  about  it.  I  told  them  the  problem  and 
said  I  should  be  glad  of  suggestions.     I  told  them  that 

*  Yorkshire  Observer,  February  1,  1916. 


76  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

we  should  either  have  to  get  men  or  women,  and  I  asked 
them  for  their  co-operation,  as  there  would  be  a  great 
deal  of  teaching  to  be  done.  "Probably,"  I  said,  "you 
would  like  to  find  the  men?"  They  agreed  to  try.  I 
gave  them  a  week,  and  at  the  end  of  a  week  they  came 
to  me  and  said  they  would  rather  have  women.  I  said 
to  them:  "Then  you  must  all  pull  together."  They  gave 
me  their  word.  Right  from  the  beginning  they  have  done 
their  level  best  to  help,  and  things  have  gone  on  per- 
fectly. On  one  occasion,  a  woman  complained  that  the 
man  directing  her  was  "working  against  her."  I  called 
the  men's  committee  together,  said  the  employer.  I  told 
them  the  facts,  and  they  have  dealt  with  the  offender 
themselves. 

The  general  system  now  followed  in  the 
shell  factories  is  to  put  so  many  skilled  men 
in  charge  of  so  many  lathes  worked  by  women 
workers.  Each  skilled  man,  who  teaches  the 
women,  sets  the  tools,  and  keeps  the  machines 
in  running  order,  oversees  eight,  ten,  or  more 
machines.  But  sometimes  the  comradeship  is 
much  closer.  For  instance  (I  quote  again  the 
witness  mentioned  above),  in  a  machine  tool 
shop,  i.  e.,  a  shop  for  the  making  of  tools  used 
in  shell  production,  one  of  the  most  highly 
skilled  parts  of  the  business,  you  may  now  see 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  77 

a  man,  with  a  woman  to  help  him,  operating 
two  lathes.  If  the  woman  falls  into  any  diffi- 
culty the  man  comes  to  help  her.  Both  can 
earn  more  money  than  each  could  earn  sepa- 
rately, and  the  skilled  man  who  formerly 
worked  the  second  lathe  is  released.  In  the 
same  shop  a  woman  watched  a  skilled  man 
doing  slot-drilling — a  process  in  which  thou- 
sandths of  an  inch  matter — for  a  fortnight. 
Now  she  runs  the  machine  herself  by  day, 
while  the  man  works  it  on  the  night  shift.  One 
woman  in  this  shop  is  "able  to  do  her  own  tool- 
setting."  The  observer  thinks  she  must  be  the 
only  woman  tool-setter  in  the  country,  and  he 
drops  the  remark  that  her  capacity  and  w^ill 
may  have  something  to  do  with  the  fact  that 
she  has  a  husband  at  the  front!  Near  by,  as 
part  of  the  same  works,  which  are  not  special- 
ised, but  engaged  in  general  engineering,  is 
a  bomb  shop  staffed  by  women,  which  is  now 
sending  3,000  bombs  a  week  to  the  trenches. 
Women  are  also  doing  gun-breech  work  of 
the  most  delicate  and  responsible  kind  under 


78  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

the  guidance  of  a  skilled  overseer.  One  of  the 
women  at  this  work  was  formerly  a  char- 
woman. She  has  never  yet  broken  a  tool.  All 
over  the  works,  indeed,  the  labour  of  women 
and  unskilled  men  is  being  utilised  in  the  same 
scientific  way.  Thus  the  area  of  the  works 
has  been  doubled  in  a  few  months,  without 
the  engagement  of  a  single  additional  skilled 
man  from  outside.  "We  have  made  the  men 
take  an  interest  in  the  women,"  say  the  em- 
ployers. "That  is  the  secret  of  our  success. 
We  care  nothing  at  all  about  the  money,  we 
are  all  for  the  output.  If  the  men  think  you 
are  going  to  exploit  women  and  cheapen  the 
work,  the  scheme  is  crabbed  right  away." 

I  myself  came  across  the  effect  of  this  sus- 
picion in  the  minds  of  the  workmen  in  the 
case  of  a  large  Yorkshire  shell  factory,  where 
the  employers  at  once  detected  and  slew  it. 
This  great  workshop,  formerly  used  for  rail- 
way work,  now  employs  some  1,300  women, 
with  a  small  staff  of  skilled  men.  The  women 
work  forty-five  hours  a  week  in  eight-hour 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  79 

shifts — ^the  men  fifty-three  hours  on  twelve- 
hour  shifts.  There  is  no  difficulty  whatever 
in  obtaining  a  full  supply  of  women's  labour 
— indeed,  the  factory  has  now  a  waiting-list 
of  500.  Nor  has  there  been  any  difficulty  with 
the  men  in  regard  to  the  women's  work.  With 
the  exception  of  two  operations,  which  are 
thought  too  heavy  for  them,  all  the  machines 
are  run  by  women. 

But  when  the  factory  began,  the  employers 
very  soon  detected  that  it  was  running  below 
its  possible  output.  There  was  a  curious  lack 
of  briskness  in  the  work — a  curious  constraint 
among  the  new  workers.  Yet  the  employers 
were  certain  that  the  women  were  keen,  and 
their  labour  potentially  efficient.  They  put 
their  heads  together,  and  posted  up  a  notice 
in  the  factory  to  the  effect  that  whatever 
might  be  the  increase  in  the  output  of  piece- 
work, the  piece-work  rate  would  not  be  altered. 
Instantly  the  atmosphere  began  to  clear,  the 
pace  of  the  machines  began  to  mount. 

It  was  a  factory  in  which  the  work  was  new. 


80  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

the  introduction  of  women  was  new,  and  the 
workers  strange  to  each  other,  and  for  the 
most  part  strange  to  their  employers.  A  small 
leaven  of  distrust  on  the  part  of  the  men 
workers  was  enough,  and  the  women  were  soon 
influenced.  Luckily,  the  mischief  was  as  quick- 
ly scotched.  Men  and  women  began  to  do 
their  best,  the  output  of  the  factory — which 
had  been  planned  for  14,000  shells  a  week — 
ran  up  to  20,000,  and  everything  has  gone 
smoothly  since. 

Let  me  now,  however,  describe  another  effect 
of  Dilution — the  employment  of  unskilled  men 
on  operations  hitherto  included  in  skilled  en- 
gineering. 

On  the  day  after  the  factory  I  have  just  de- 
scribed, my  journey  took  me  to  another  town 
close  by,  where  my  guide — a  Director  of  one 
of  the  largest  and  best-known  steel  and  engi- 
neering works  in  the  kingdom — showed  me  a 
new  shell  factory  filled  with  800  to  900  men, 
all  "medically  unfit"  for  the  Army,  and  al- 
most all  drawn  from  the  small  trades  and  pro- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  81 

fessions  of  the  town,  especially  from  those 
which  had  been  hard  hit  by  the  war.  Among 
those  I  talked  to  I  found  a  keeper  of  bathing- 
machines,  a  publican's  assistant,  clerks,  shop 
assistants,  three  clergy  —  these  latter  going 
home  for  their  Sunday  duty,  and  giving  their 
wages  to  the  Red  Cross — unemployed  archi- 
tects, and  the  like. 

I  cannot  recall  any  shop  which  made  a 
greater  impression  of  energy,  of  a  spirit  behind 
the  work,  than  this  shop.  In  its  inspecting- 
room  I  found  a  graduate  from  Yale.  "I  had 
to  join  in  the  fight,"  he  said  quietly — "this  was 
the  best  way  I  could  think  of."  And  it  was 
noticeable  besides  for  some  remarkable  ma- 
chines, which  your  country  had  also  sent  us. 

In  other  shell  factories  a  single  lathe  carries 
through  one  process,  interminably  repeated, 
sometimes  two,  possibly  three.  But  here,  with 
the  exception  of  the  fixing  and  drilling  of  the 
copper  band,  and  a  few  minor  operations,  one 
lathe  made  the  shell  —  cut,  bored,  roughed, 
turned,    nosed,    and   threaded    it,    so   that    it 


82  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

dropped  out,  all  but  the  finished  thing — ^minus, 
of  course,  the  fuse.  The  steel  pole  introduced 
at  the  beginning  of  the  process  made  nine  shells, 
and  the  average  time  per  shell  was  twenty-three 
minutes.  No  wonder  that  in  the  great  ware- 
house adjoining  the  workshop  one  saw  the  shell 
heaps  piling  up  in  their  tens  of  thousands — 
only  to  be  rushed  off  week  by  week,  incessantly, 
to  the  front.  The  introduction  of  these  ma- 
phines  had  been  largely  the  work  of  an  able 
Irish  manager,  who  described  to  me  the  intense 
anxiety  with  which  he  had  watched  their  first 
putting  up  and  testing,  lest  the  vast  expendi- 
ture incurred  should  have  been  in  any  degree 
thrown  away.  His  cheerful  looks  and  the  shell 
warehouse  told  the  sequel.  When  I  next  met 
him  it  was  at  a  northern  station  in  company 
with  his  Director.  They  were  then  apparently 
in  search  of  new  machinery!  The  workshop  I 
had  seen  was  being  given  over  to  women,  and 
the  men  were  moving  on  to  heavier  work.  And 
this  is  the  kind  of  process  which  is  going  on 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  83 

over  the  length  and  breadth  of  industrial 
England. 

So  far,  however,  I  have  described  the  expan- 
sion or  adaptation  of  firms  already  existing. 
But  the  country  is  now  being  covered  with 
another  and  new  type  of  workshop — the  Na- 
tional Shell  factories — which  are  founded,  fi- 
nanced, and  run  by  the  Ministry  of  Munitions. 
The  English  Government  is  now  by  far  the 
greatest  engineering  employer  in  the  world. 

Let  me  take  an  illustration  from  a  Yorkshire 
town — a  town  where  this  Government  engi- 
neering is  rapidly  absorbing  everything  but 
the  textile  factories.  A  young  and  most  com- 
petent Engineer  officer  is  the  Government  head 
of  the  factory.  The  work  was  begun  last  July, 
by  the  help  of  borrowed  lathes,  in  a  building 
which  had  been  used  for  painting  railway-car- 
riages; its  first  shell  was  completed  last  Au- 
gust. The  staff  last  June  was  1.  It  is  now 
about  200,  and  the  employees  nearly  2,500. 

A  month  after  the  first  factory  was  opened, 
the  Government  asked  for  another — for  larger 


84-  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

shell.  It  was  begun  in  August,  and  was  in 
work  in  a  few  weeks.  In  September  a  still 
larger  factory — for  still  larger  shells— (how 
these  demands  illustrate  the  course  of  the  war! 
— ^how  they  are  themselves  illustrated  by  the 
history  of  Verdun!)  was  seen  to  be  necessary. 
It  was  begun  in  September,  and  is  now  run- 
ning. Almost  all  the  machines  used  in  the  fac- 
tory have  been  made  in  the  town  itself,  and 
about  100  small  firms,  making  shell  parts — 
fuses,  primers,  gaines,  etc. — have  been  grouped 
round  the  main  firm,  and  are  every  day  sending 
in  their  work  to  the  factory  to  be  tested,  put 
together,  and  delivered. 

No  factory  made  a  better  impression  upon 
me  than  this  one.  The  large,  airy  building 
with  its  cheerful  lighting;  the  girls  in  their 
dark-blue  caps  and  overalls,  their  long  and 
comely  lines  reminding  one  of  some  proces- 
sional effect  in  a  Florentine  picture;  the  high 
proportion  of  good  looks,  even  of  delicate 
beauty,  among  them;  the  upper  galleries  with 
their  tables  piled  with  glittering  brasswork, 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  85 

amid  which  move  the  quick,  trained  hands  of 
the  women — if  one  could  have  forgotten  for  a 
moment  the  meaning  of  it  all,  one  might  have 
applied  to  it  Carlyle's  description  of  a  great 
school,  as  "a  temple  of  industrious  peace.'* 

Some  day,  perhaps,  this  "new  industry" — 
as  our  ancestors  talked  of  a  "new  learning" — 
this  swift,  astonishing  development  of  indus- 
trial faculty  among  our  people,  especially 
among  our  women,  will  bear  other  and  rich 
fruit  for  England  under  a  cleared  sky.  It  is 
impossible  that  it  should  pass  by  without  effect, 
profound  effect  upon  our  national  life.  But  at 
present  it  has  one  meaning  and  one  only — wurl 

Talk  to  these  girls  and  women.  This  woman 
has  lost  her  son — ^that  one  her  husband.  This 
one  has  a  brother  home  on  leave,  and  is  rejoic- 
ing in  the  return  of  her  husband  from  the 
trenches,  as  a  skilled  man,  indispensable  in  the 
shop;  another  has  friends  in  the  places  and 
among  the  people  which  suffered  in  the  last 
Zeppelin  raid.  She  speaks  of  it  with  tight  lips. 
Was  it  she  who  chalked  the  inscription  found 


86  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

by  the  Lady  Superintendent  on  a  lathe  some 
nights  ago — ''Done  fourteen  to-day.  Beat  that 
if  you  can,  you  devilsT 

INTo !  —  under  this  fast  -  spreading  industry, 
with  its  suggestion  of  good  management  and 
high  wages,  there  is  the  beat  of  no  ordinary  im- 
pulse. Some  feel  it  much  more  than  others; 
but,  says  the  clever  and  kindly  Superintendent 
I  have  already  quoted:  "The  majority  are 
very  decidedly  working  from  the  point  of  view 
of  doing  something  for  their  country.  ...  A 
great  many  of  the  fuse  women  are  earning  for 
the  first  time.  .  .  .  The  more  I  see  of  them 
all,  the  better  I  like  them."  And  then  follow 
some  interesting  comments  on  the  relation  of 
the  more  educated  and  refined  women  among 
them  to  the  skilled  mechanics — two  national 
types  that  have  perhaps  never  met  in  such  close 
working  contact  before.  One's  thoughts  begin 
to  follow  out  some  of  the  possible  social  results 
of  this  national  movement. 


< 

a. 


Pi; 


<5 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  87 

II 

But  now  the  Midlands  and  the  Yorkshire 
towns  are  behind  me.  The  train  hurries  on 
through  a  sunny  afternoon,  and  I  look  through 
some  notes  sent  me  by  an  expert  in  the  great 
campaign.  Some  of  them  represent  its  hu- 
mours. Here  is  a  perfectly  true  story,  which 
shows  an  Englishman  with  "a  move  on,''  not 
unworthy  of  your  side  of  the  water. 

A  father  and  son,  both  men  of  tremendous 
energy,  were  the  chiefs  of  a  very  large  f actory, 
which  had  been  already  extensively  added  to. 
The  father  lived  in  a  house  alongside  the  works. 
One  day  business  took  him  into  the  neighbour- 
ing county,  whilst  the  son  came  up  to  London 
on  munition  work.  On  the  father's  return  he 
was  astonished  to  see  a  furniture  van  removing 
the  contents  of  his  house.  The  son  emerged. 
He  had  already  signed  a  contract  for  a  new 
factory  on  the  site  of  his  father's  house;  the 
materials  of  the  house  were  sold  and  the  furni- 
ture half  gone.    After  a  first  start,  the  father 


88  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

took  it  in  true  Yorkshire  fashion— wasting  no 
words,  and  apparently  proud  of  his  son! 

Here  we  are  at  last,  in  the  true  north — 
crossing  a  river,  with  a  climbing  town  beyond, 
its  tiled  roofs  wreathed  in  smoke,  through  which 
the  afternoon  lights  are  playing.  I  am  carried 
off  to  a  friend's  house.  Some  directors  of  the 
great  works  I  am  come  to  see  look  in  to  make  a 
kindly  plan  for  the  morrow,  and  in  the  evening, 
I  find  myself  sitting  next  one  of  the  most  illus- 
trious of  modern  inventors,  with  that  touch  of 
dream  in  manner  and  look  which  so  often  goes 
with  scientific  discovery.  The  invention  of  this 
gentle  and  courteous  man  has  affected  every 
vessel  of  any  size  afloat,  whether  for  war  or 
trade,  and  the  whole  electrical  development  of 
the  world.  The  fact  was  to  be  driven  home 
even  to  my  feminine  ignorance  of  mechanics 
when,  a  fortnight  later,  the  captain  of  a  Flag- 
ship and  I  were  hanging  over  the  huge  shaft 
leading  down  to  the  engine-rooms  of  the  Super- 
dreadnought,  and  my  companion  was  explain- 
ing to  me  something  of  the  driving  power  of 


ENGLAND^S    EFFORT  89 

the  ship.    But  on  this  first  meeting,  how  much 
I  might  have  asked  of  the  kind,  great  man 
beside  me,  and  was  too  preoccupied  to  ask! 
May  the  opportunity  be  retrieved  some  day! 
My  head  was  really  full  of  the  overwhelming 
facts,  whether  of  labour  or  of  output,  relating 
to  this  world-famous  place,  which  were  being 
discussed  around  me.    I  do  not  name  the  place, 
because  the  banishment  of  names,  whether  of 
persons  or  places,  has  been  part  of  the  plan 
of  these  articles.    But  one  can  no  more  disguise 
it  by  writing  round  it  than  one  could  disguise 
Windsor  Castle  by  any  description  that  was 
not  ridiculous.     Many  a  German  officer  has 
walked  through  these  works,  I  imagine,  before 
the  war,  smoking  the  cigarette  of  peace  with 
their    Directors,    and    inwardly    ruminating 
strange  thoughts.     If  any  such  comes  across 
these  few  lines,  what  I  have  written  will,  I 
think,  do  England  no  harm. 

But  here  are  some  of  the  figures  that  can  be 
given.  The  shop  area  of  the  ammunition  shops 
alone  has  been  increased  eightfold  since  the 


90  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

outbreak  of  war.  The  total  weight  of  shell 
delivered  during  1915  was — in  tons — fourteen 
times  as  much  as  that  of  1914.  The  weight  of 
shell  delivered  per  week,  as  between  December, 
1914,  and  December,  1915,  has  risen  nearly  ten 
times.  The  number  of  work-people,  in  these 
shops,  men  and  women,  had  risen  (a)  as  com- 
pared with  the  month  in  which  war  broke  out, 
to  a  figure  eight  times  as  great;  (b)  as  com- 
pared with  December,  1914,  to  one  between 
three  and  four  times  as  great.  And  over  the 
whole  vast  enterprise,  shipyards,  gun  shops, 
ammunition  shops,  with  all  kinds  of  naval  and 
other  machinery  used  in  war,  the  numbers  of 
work-people  employed  had  increased  since  1913 
more  than  200  per  cent.  They,  with  their 
families,  equal  the  population  of  a  great  city — 
you  may  see  a  new  town  rising  to  meet  their 
needs  on  the  farther  side  of  the  river. 

As  to  Dilution,  it  is  now  accepted  by  the 
men,  who  said  when  it  was  proposed  to  them: 
"Why  didn't  you  come  to  us  six  months  ago?" 

And  it  is  working  wonders  here  as  elsewhere. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  91 

For  instance,  a  particular  portion  of  the  breech 
mechanism  of  a  gun  used  to  take  one  hour  and 
twenty  minutes  to  make.  On  the  Dilution  plan 
it  is  done  on  a  capstan,  and  takes  six  minutes. 
Where  500  women  were  employed  before  the 
war,  there  are  now  close  on  9,000,  and  there 
will  be  thousands  more,  requiring  one  skilled 
man  as  tool-setter  to  about  nine  or  ten  women. 
In  a  great  gun-carriage  shop,  "what  used  to  be 
done  in  two  years  is  now  done  in  one  month." 
In  another,  two  tons  of  brass  were  used  before 
the  war;  a  common  figure  now  is  twenty-one. 
A  large  milling  shop,  now  entirely  worked  by 
pien,  is  to  be  given  up  immediately  to  women. 
And  so  on. 

Dilution,  it  seems  to  me,  is  breaking  down  a 
number  of  labour  conventions  which  no  longer 
answer  to  the  real  conditions  of  the  engineer- 
ing trades.  The  pressure  of  the  war  is  doing 
a  real  service  to  both  employers  and  employed 
by  the  simplification  and  overhauling  it  is 
everywhere  bringing  about. 

As  to  the  problem  of  what  is  to  be  done  with 


92  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

the  women  after  the  war,  one  may  safely  leave 
it  to  the  future.  It  is  probably  bound  up  with 
that  other  problem  of  the  great  new  workshops 
springing  up  everywhere,  and  the  huge  new 
plants  laid  down.  One  thinks  of  the  rapid  re- 
covery of  French  trade  after  the  war  of  1870, 
and  of  the  far  more  rapid  rate — after  forty 
years  of  machine  and  transport  development, 
at  which  the  industry  of  the  Allied  countries 
may  possibly  recover  the  ravages  of  the  pres- 
ent war,  when  once  peace  is  signed.  In  that 
recovery,  how  great  a  part  may  yet  be  played 
by  these  war  workshops !— transformed  to  the 
uses  of  peace ;  by  their  crowds  of  work-people, 
and  by  the  hitherto  unused  intelligence  they 
are  everywhere  evoking  and  training  among 
both  men  and  women. 

As  for  the  following  day,  my  impressions, 
looking  back,  seem  to  be  all  a  variant  on  a  well- 
known  Greek  chorus,  which  hymns  the  amaz- 
ing— the  "terrible" — cleverness  of  Man!  Sea- 
faring, tillage,  house-building,  horse-taming,  so 
muses  Sophocles,  two  thousand  three  hundred 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  93 

years  ago;  how  did  man  ever  find  them  out? 
"Wonders  are  many,  but  the  most  wonderful 
thing  is  man!  Only  against  death  has  he  no 
resource'' 

Intelligence — and  death!  They  are  written 
everywhere  in  these  endless  workshops,  de- 
voted to  the  fiercest  purposes  of  war.  First  of 
all,  we  visit  the  "danger  buildings"  in  the  fuse 
factory,  where  mostly  women  are  employed. 
About  500  women  are  at  work  here,  on  differ- 
ent processes  connected  with  the  delicate  mech- 
anism and  filling  of  the  fuse  and  gaine,  some  of 
which  are  dangerous.  Detonator  work,  for  in- 
stance. The  Lady  Superintendent  selects  for 
it  specially  steady  and  careful  women  or  girls, 
:who  are  paid  at  time-and-a-quarter  rate.  Only 
about  eight  girls  are  allowed  in  each  room. 
The  girls  here  all  wear — for  protection — green 
muslin  veils  and  gloves.  It  gives  them  a  curi- 
ous, ghastly  look,  that  fits  the  occupation.  For 
they  are  making  small  pellets  for  the  charg- 
ing of  shells,  out  of  a  high-explosive  powder. 
Each  girl  uses  a  small  copper  ladle  to  take  the 


94.  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

powder  out  of  a  box  before  her,  and  puts  it 
into  a  press  which  stamps  it  into  a  tiny  block, 
looking  like  ivory.  She  holds  her  hand  over 
a  little  tray  of  water  lest  any  of  the  powder 
should  escape.  What  the  explosive  and  death- 
dealing  power  of  it  is,  it  does  not  do  to  think 
about. 

In  another  room  a  fresh  group  of  girls  are 
handling  a  black  powder  for  another  part  of 
the  detonator,  and  because  of  the  irritant  na- 
ture of  the  powder,  are  wearing  white  band- 
ages round  the  nose  and  mouth.  There  is  great 
competition  for  these  rooms,  the  Superinten- 
dent says!  The  girls  in  them  work  on  two 
shifts  of  ten  and  one-half  hours  each,  and 
would  resent  a  change  to  a  shorter  shift.  They 
have  one  hour  for  dinner,  half  an  hour  for  tea, 
a  cup  of  tea  in  the  middle  of  the  morning — 
and  the  whole  of  Saturdays  free.  To  the  eye 
of  the  ordinary  visitor  they  show  few  signs  of 
fatigue. 

After  the  fuse  lactory  we  pass  through  the 
high-explosive  factory,  where  250  girls  are  at 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  95 

work  in  a  number  of  isolated  wooden  sheds 
filling  18-pounder  shell  with  high  explosive. 
The  brass  cartridge-case  is  being  filled  with 
cordite,  bundles  of  what  look  like  thin  brown 
sticks,  and  the  shell  itself,  including  its  central 
gaine  or  tube,  with  the  various  deadly  explo- 
sives we  have  seen  prepared  in  the  "danger 
buildings."  The  shell  is  fitted  into  the  car- 
tridge-case, the  primer  and  the  fuse  screwed 
on.    It  is  now  ready  to  be  fired. 

I  stand  and  look  at  boxes  of  shells,  packed, 
and  about  to  go  straight  to  the  front.  A  train 
is  waiting  close  by  to  take  them  the  first  stage 
on  their  journey.  I  little  thought  then  that 
I  should  see  these  boxes,  or  their  fellows,  next, 
on  the  endless  ranks  of  ammunition  lorries  be- 
hind the  fighting  lines  in  France,  and  that 
within  a  fortnight  I  should  myself  stand  by 
and  see  one  of  those  shells  fired  from  a  British 
gun,  little  more  than  a  mile  from  Neuve 
Chapelle. 

But  here  are  the  women  and  girls  trooping 
out  to  dinner.    A  sweet-faced  Superintendent 


96  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

fcomes  to  talk  to  me.  "They  are  not  as  strong 
as  the  men,"  she  says,  pointing  to  the  long  lines 
of  girls,  "but  what  they  lack  in  strength  they 
make  up  in  patriotic  spirit."  I  speak  to  two 
educated  women,  who  turn  out  to  be  High 
School  mistresses  from  a  town  that  has  been 
several  times  visited  by  Zeppelins.  "We  just 
felt  we  must  come  and  help  to  kill  Germans," 
they  say  quietly.  "All  we  mind  is  getting  up 
at  five-thirty  every  morning.  Oh,  no !  it  is  not 
too  tiring." 

Afterwards? — I  remember  one  long  proces- 
sion of  stately  shops,  with  their  high  windows, 
their  floors  crowded  with  machines,  their  roofs 
lined  with  cranes,  the  flame  of  the  forges,  and 
the  smoke  of  the  fizzling  steel  lighting  up  the 
dark  groups  of  men,  the  huge  howitzer  shells, 
red-hot,  swinging  in  mid-air,  and  the  same 
shells,  tamed  and  gleaming,  on  the  great  lathes 
that  rough  and  bore  and  finish  them.  Here 
are  shell  for  the  Queen  Elizabeth  guns! — the 
biggest  shell  made.  This  shop  had  been  put 
up  by  good  luck  just  as  the  war  began.    Its 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  97 

output  of  steel  has  increased  from  80  tons  a 
week  to  1,040. 

Then  another  huge  fuse  shop,  quite  new, 
where  1,400  girls  in  one  shift  are  at  work — said 
to  be  the  largest  fuse  shop  known.  And  on 
the  following  morning,  an  endless  spectacle  of 
war  work — gun-carriages,  naval  turrets,  tor- 
pedo tubes,  armed  railway  carriages,  small 
Hotchkiss  guns  for  merchant  ships,  tool-mak- 
ing shops,  gauge  shops — and  so  on  for  ever. 
In  the  tool-making  shops  the  output  has  risen 
from  44,000  to  3,000,000  a  year! 

And  meanwhile  I  have  not  seen  anything, 
and  shall  not  have  time  to  see  anything  of  the 
famous  shipyards  of  the  firm.  But  with  re- 
gard to  them,  all  that  it  is  necessary  to  remem- 
ber is  that  before  the  war  they  were  capable 
of  berthing  twenty  ships  at  once,  from  the 
largest  battleship  downward ;  and  we  have  Mr. 
Balfour's  word  for  it  as  to  what  has  happened, 
since  the  war,  in  the  naval  shipyards  of  this 
country.  "We  have  added  a  million  tons  to 
the  Navy — and  we  have  doubled  its  personnel'^ 


98  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

And  now  let  me  record  two  final  sayings. 
One  from  a  manager  of  a  department: 

We  have  a  good  many  Socialists  here,  and  they  con- 
stantly give  trouble.  But  the  great  majority  of  the  men 
have  done  wonderfully !  Some  men  have  put  in  one  hun- 
dred hours  a  week  since  the  war  began.  Some  have  not 
lost  a  minute  since  it  began.  The  old  hands  have  worked 
splendidly. 

And  another  from  one  of  the  Directors : 

I  know  of  no  drunkenness  among  our  women.  I  don't 
remember  ever  having  seen  a  drunken  woman  round  here. 


Ill 

I  have  almost  said  my  say  on  munitions, 
though  I  could  continue  the  story  much  longer. 
But  the  wonder  of  it  consists  really  in  its  vast- 
ness,  in  the  steady  development  of  a  move- 
ment which  will  not  end  or  slacken  till  the 
Allies  are  victorious.  Except  for  the  endless 
picturesqueness  of  the  women's  share  in  it, 
and  the  mechanical  invention  and  adaptation 
going  on  everywhere,  with  which  only  a  tech- 
nical expert  could  deal,  it  is  of  course  monoto- 
nous, and  I  might  weary  you.    I  will  only— 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  99 

before  asking  you  to  cross  the  Channel  with 
me  to  France — put  down  a  few  notes  and  im- 
pressions on  the  Clyde  district,  where,  as  our 
newspapers  will  have  told  you,  there  is  at  the 
present  moment  (March  29th)  some  serious 
labour  trouble,  with  which  the  Government  is 
dealing.  Until  further  light  is  thrown  upon 
its  causes,  comment  is  better  postponed.  But 
I  have  spoken  quite  frankly  in  these  letters  of 
"danger  spots,"  where  a  type  of  international 
Socialism  is  to  be  found — affecting  a  small 
number  of  men,  over  whom  the  ideas  of  "coun- 
try" and  "national  honour"  seem  to  have  no 
hold.  Every  country  possesses  such  men  and 
must  guard  itself  against  them.  A  nucleus  of 
them  exists  in  this  populous  and  important 
district.  How  far  their  influence  is  helped 
among  those  who  care  nothing  for  their  ideas, 
by  any  real  or  supposed  grievances  against  the 
employers,  by  misunderstandings  and  miscon- 
ceptions, by  the  sheer  nervous  fatigue  and  irri- 
tation of  the  men's  long  effort,  or  by  those 
natural  fears  for  the  future  of  their  Unions,  to 


llOO  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

which  I  have  once  or  twice  referred,  only  one 
long  familiar  with  the  district  could  say.  I 
can  only  point  out  here  one  or  two  interesting 
facts.  In  the  first  place,  in  this  crowded  coun- 
tryside, where  a  small  minority  of  dangerous 
extremists  appear  to  have  no  care  for  their 
comrades  in  the  trenches,  the  recruiting  for  the 
new  Armies — so  I  learn  from  one  of  the  lead- 
ing authorities — has  been — "taken  on  any  basis 
whatever — substantially  higher  than  in  any 
other  district.  The  men  came  up  magnificent- 
ly." That  means  that  among  those  left  behind, 
whatever  disturbing  and  disintegrating  forces 
exist  in  a  great  Labour  centre  have  freer  play 
than  would  normally  be  the  case.  A  certain 
amount  of  patriotic  cream  has  been  skimmed, 
and  in  some  places  the  milk  that  remains  must 
be  thin.  In  the  second  place — (you  will  re- 
member the  employer  I  quoted  to  you  in  a 
former  letter) — the  work  done  here  by  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  workmen  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war,  especially  in  the  great  ship- 
yards, and  done  with  the  heartiest  and  most 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  101 

self-sacrificing  good-will,  has  been  simply  in- 
valuable to  the  nation,  and  England  remem- 
bers it  well.  And  finally,  the  invasion  of 
women  has  perhaps  been  more  startling  to  the 
workmen  here  than  anywhere  else.  Not  a  sin- 
gle woman  was  employed  in  the  works  or  fac- 
tories of  the  district  before  the  war,  except  in 
textiles.  There  will  soon  be  15,000  in  the  muni- 
tion workshops,  and  that  will  not  be  the  end. 

But  Great  Britain  cannot  afford — even  in  a 
single  factory — to  allow  any  trifling  at  this 
moment  with  the  provision  of  guns,  and  the 
Government  must — and  will — act  decisively. 

As  to  the  drinking  in  this  district  of  which 
so  much  has  been  said,  and  which  is  still  far  in 
excess  of  what  it  ought  to  be,  I  found  many 
^people  hard  put  to  it  to  explain  why  the  re- 
striction of  hours  which  hasr  worked  so  con- 
spicuously well  in  other  districts  has  had  com- 
paratively little  effect  here.  Is  it  defects  of 
administration,  or  a  certain  "cussedness"  in  the 
Scotch  character,  which  resents  any  tighten- 
ing of  law?    One  large  employer  with  whom 


102  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

I  discuss  it,  believes  it  would  suit  the  Scotch 
better  to  abolish  all  restrictions,  and  simply 
punish  drunkenness  much  more  severely.  And 
above  all — "open  all  possible  means  of  amuse- 
ment on  Sundays,  especially  the  cinemas !" — a 
new  and  strange  doctrine,  even  now,  in  the 
ears  of  a  country  that  holds  the  bones  of  John 
Knox.  There  seems  indeed  to  be  a  terribly 
close  connection  between  the  dulness  of  the 
Scotch  Sunday  and  the  obstinacy  of  Scotch 
drinking;  and  when  one  thinks  of  the  heavy 
toil  of  the  week,  of  the  confinement  of  the 
workshops,  and  the  strain  of  the  work,  one  feels 
at  any  rate  that  here  is  a  problem  which  is  to 
be  solved,  not  preached  at ;  and  will  be  solved, 
some  day,  by  nimbler  and  hmnaner  wits  than 
ours. 

In  any  case,  the  figures,  gathered  a  month 
ago  from  those  directly  concerned,  as  to  the 
general  extension  of  the  national  effort  here, 
could  hardly  be  more  striking.  In  normal 
times,  the  district,  which  is  given  up  to  Ad- 
miralty work,  makes  ships  and  guns,  but  has 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  103 

never  made  shells.  The  huge  shell  factories 
springing  up  all  over  it  are  a  wholly  new  cre- 
ation. As  usual,  they  are  filled  with  women, 
working  under  skilled  male  direction,  and 
everywhere  one  found  among  managers  and 
superintendents  the  same  enthusiasm  for  the 
women's  work.  "It's  their  honour  they  work 
on,"  said  one  forewoman.  "That's  why  they 
stand  it  so  well."  The  average  working  week 
is  fifty-four  hours,  but  overtime  may  seriously 
lengthen  the  tale.  Wages  are  high;  canteens 
and  rest-rooms  are  being  everywhere  provided ; 
and  the  housing  question  is  being  tackled.  The 
rapidity  of  the  women's  piece-work  is  aston- 
ishing, and  the  mingling  of  classes — girls  of 
education  and  refinement  working  quite  hap- 
pily with  those  of  a  much  humbler  type — runs 
without  friction  under  the  influence  of  a  com- 
mon spirit.  This  common  spirit  was  well  ex- 
pressed by  a  girl  who  before  she  came  to  the 
factory  was  working  a  knitting-machine.  "I 
like  this  better — because  there's  a  purpose  in 
it.''     A  sweet-faced  woman  who  was  turning 


104.  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

copper  bands  for  shell,  said  to  me:  "I  never 
worked  a  machine  before  the  war.  I  have  done 
912  in  ten  hours,  but  that  tired  me  very  much. 
I  can  do  500  or  600  quite  easily." 

On  the  same  premises,  after  leaving  the  shell 
shops,  we  passed  rapidly  through  gun  shops, 
where  I  saw  again  processes  which  had  become 
almost  familiar.  "The  production  of  howit- 
zers," said  my  guide,  "is  the  question  of  the 
day.  We  are  making  them  with  great  rapidity 
— ^but  the  trouble  is  to  get  enough  machines." 
The  next  shop,  devoted  to  18-pounder  field- 
guns,  was  "gi'een  fields  fifteen  months  ago," 
and  the  one  adjoining  it,  a  fine  shed  about 
400  feet  square,  for  howitzer  work,  was  started 
in  August  last,  on  a  site  "which  was  a  bog  with 
a  burn  running  through  it."  Soon  "every  foot 
of  space  will  be  filled  with  machines,  and  there 
will  be  1,200  people  at  work  here,  including 
400  women.  In  the  next  shop  we  are  turn- 
ing out  about  4,000  shrapnel  and  4,000  high- 
explosive  shells  per  week.  When  we  started 
women  on  what  we  thought  this  heavy  shell. 


ENGLAND'S   EFFORT  105 

we  provided  men  to  help  lift  the  shell  in  and 
out  of  the  machines.  The  women  thrust  the 
men  aside  in  five  minutes." 

Later  on,  as  I  was  passing  through  a  series 
of  new  workshops  occupied  with  all  kinds  of 
army  work  and  employing  large  numbers  of 
women,  I  stopped  to  speak  to  a  Belgian 
woman.  "Have  you  ever  done  any  machine 
work  before?"  "No,  Madame,  never — Mais, 
c*est  la  guerre.  II  faut  tuer  les  Allemandsr  It 
was  a  quiet,  passionless  voice.  But  one  thought, 
with  a  shiver,  of  those  names  of  eternal  infamy 
— of  Termonde,  Aerschot,  Dinant,  Louvain. 

It  was  with  this  woman's  words  in  my  ears 
that  I  set  out  on  my  last  visit — ^to  which  they 
were  the  fitting  prelude.  The  afternoon  was 
darkening  fast.  The  motor  sped  down  a  river 
valley,  sodden  with  rain  and  melting  snow, 
and  after  some  miles  we  turn  into  a  half-made 
road,  leading  to  some  new  buildings,  and  a 
desolate  space  beyond.  A  sentry  challenges 
us,  and  we  produce  our  permit.  Then  we  dis- 
mount, and  I  look  out  upon  a  wide  stretch  of 


106  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

what  three  months  ago  was  swamp,  or  wet 
plough  land.  Now  its  250  acres  are  enclosed 
with  barbed  wire,  and  patrolled  by  sentries 
night  and  day.  A  nmnber  of  small  buildings, 
workshops,  stores,  etc.,  are  rising  all  over  it. 
I  am  looking  at  what  is  to  be  the  great  "fill- 
ing" factory  of  the  district,  where  9,000  women, 
in  addition  to  male  worlanen,  will  soon  be  em- 
ployed in  charging  the  shell  coming  from  the 
new  shell  factories  we  have  left  behind  in  the 
darkness. 

Strange  and  tragic  scene !  Strange  uprising 
of  women ! 

We  regain  the  motor  and  speed  onwards, 
my  secretary  and  I,  through  unknown  roads 
far  away  from  the  city  and  its  factories  to- 
wards the  country  house  where  we  are  to  spend 
the  night.  In  my  memory  there  surge  a  thou- 
sand recollections  of  all  that  I  have  seen  in 
the  preceding  fortnight.  An  England  roused 
at  last — rushing  to  factory,  and  lathe,  to  ship- 
yard and  forge,  determined  to  meet  and  dom- 
inate her  terrible  enemy  in  the  workshop,  as 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  107 

she  has  long  since  met  and  dominated  him  at 
sea,  and  will  in  time  dominate  him  on  land — 
that  is  how  my  country  looks  to  me  to-night. 

.  .  .  The  stars  are  coming  out.  Far  away, 
over  what  seems  like  water  with  lights  upon 
it,  there  are  dim  snowy  mountains — ^majestic — 
rising  into  the  sky.  The  noise  and  clamour  of 
the  factories  are  all  quiet  in  the  night.  Two 
thoughts  remain  with  me  —  Britain's  ships 
in  the  North  Sea — Britain's  soldiers  in  the 
trenches.  And  encircling  and  sustaining  both 
the  justice  of  a  great  cause — as  these  white 
Highland  hills  look  down  upon  and  encircle 
this  valley. 


IV 

Dear  H. 

A  million  and  a  half  of  men — over  a  quarter 
of  a  million  of  women — working  in  some  4,000 
State-controlled  workshops  for  the  supply  of 
munitions  of  war,  not  only  to  our  own  troops, 
but  to  those  of  our  allies — the  whole,  in  the 
main,  a  creation  of  six  months'  effort — ^this  is 
the  astonishing  spectacle  of  some  of  the  de- 
tails of  which  I  have  tried,  as  an  eye-witness, 
to  give  you  in  my  previous  letters  a  rapid  and 
imperfect  sketch. 

But  what  of  the  men,  the  Armies,  for  which 
these  munitions  are  being  made  and  hurried 
to  the  fighting-lines?  It  was  at  Aldershot,  a 
few  days  ago,  that  I  listened  to  some  details 
of  the  first  rush  of  the  new  Armies,  given  me 
by  a  member  of  the  Headquarters  Staff  who 
had  been  through  it  all.  Aldershot  in  peace 
time  held  about  27,000  troops.    Since  the  out- 


108 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  109 

break  of  war  some  million  and  a  quarter  of 
men  have  passed  through  the  gi-eat  camp,  com- 
ing in  ceaselessly  for  training  and  equipment, 
and  going  out  again  to  the  theatres  of  war. 

In  the  first  days  and  weeks  of  the  war — dur- 
ing and  after  the  marvellous  precision  and 
rapidity  with  which  the  Expeditionary  Force 
was  despatched  to  France — men  poured  in 
from  all  parts,  from  all  businesses  and  occu- 
pations; rich  and  poor,  north  and  south  coun- 
try men,  English,  Scotch,  Irish,  and  Welsh; 
men  from  the  Dominions,  who  had  flung  them- 
selves into  the  first  home-coming  steamer ;  men 
from  India,  and  men  from  the  uttermost  parts 
of  Africa  and  Asia  who  had  begged  or  worked 
their  way  home.  They  were  magnificent  ma- 
terial. They  came  with  set  faces,  asking  only 
for  training,  training,  training! — and  "what  the 
peace  soldier  learns  in  six  months,"  said  my 
companion,  "they  learnt  in  six  weeks.  We  had 
neither  uniforms  nor  rifles,  neither  guns  nor 
horses  for  them.  We  did  not  know  how  to  feed 
them  or  to  house  them.    In  front  of  the  head- 


110  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

quarters  at  Aldershot,  that  Mecca  of  the  sol- 
dier, where  no  one  would  dare  to  pass  in  ordi- 
nary times  whose  turnout  is  not  immaculate, 
the  most  extraordinary  figures,  in  bowler  hats 
and  bits  of  uniform,  passed  unrebuked.  We 
had  to  raid  the  neighbouring  towns  for  food, 
to  send  frantic  embassies  to  London  for  bread 
and  meat ;  to  turn  out  any  sort  of  shed  to  house 
them.  Luckily  it  was  summer  weather ;  other- 
wise I  don't  know  what  we  should  have  done 
for  blankets.  But  nobody  'groused/  Every- 
body worked,  and  there  were  many  who  felt 
it  'the  time  of  their  lives.'  " 

And  yet  England  "engineered  the  war!" 
England's  hypocrisy  and  greed  demanded  the 
crushing  of  Germany — hence  the  lying  "ex- 
cuse" of  Belgium — that  apparently  is  what  all 
good  Germans — except  those  who  know  better 
— believe;  what  every  German  child  is  being 
taught.  As  I  listen  to  my  companion's  story, 
I  am  reminded,  however,  of  a  puzzled  remark 
which  reached  me  lately,  written  just  before 
Christmas  last,  by  a  German  nurse  in  a  Ber- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  111 

lin  hospital,  who  has  English  relations,  friends 
of  my  own.  "We  begin  to  wonder  whether  it 
really  was  England  who  caused  the  war — since 
you  seem  to  be  so  dreadfully  unprepared!" 
So  writes  this  sensible  girl  to  one  of  her 
mother's  kindred  in  England,  in  a  letter  which 
escaped  the  German  censor.  She  might  in- 
deed wonder!  To  have  deliberately  planned 
a  Continental  war  with  Germany,  and  Ger- 
many's 8,000,000  of  soldiers,  without  men, 
guns,  or  ammunition  beyond  the  requirements 
of  an  Expeditionary  Force  of  160,000  men, 
might  have  well  become  the  State  of  Cloud- 
Cuckoo-Land.  But  the  England  of  Raleigh, 
Chatham,  Pitt,  and  Wellington  has  not  gener- 
ally been  reckoned  a  nation  of  pure  fools. 

The  military  camps  of  Great  Britain  tell  the 
tale  of  our  incredible  venture.  "Great  areas  of 
land  had  to  be  cleared,  levelled,  and  drained; 
barracks  had  to  be  built ;  one  camp  alone  used 
42,000  railway  truck-loads  of  building  ma- 
terial." There  was  no  time  to  build  new  rail- 
ways, and  the  existing  roads  were  rapidly  worn 


112  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

out.  They  were  as  steadily  repaired;  and  on 
every  side  new  camps  sprang  up  around  the 
parent  camps  of  the  country. 

The  Surrey  commons  and  woods,  the  Wilt- 
shire downs,  the  Midland  and  Yorkshire 
heaths,  the  Buckinghamshire  hills  have  been 
everywhere  invaded — ^their  old  rural  sanctities 
are  gone.  I  walked  in  bewilderment  the  other 
day  up  and  down  the  slopes  of  a  Surrey  hill 
which  when  I  knew  it  last  was  one  kingdom  of 
purple  heather,  beloved  of  the  honey-bees,  and 
scarcely  ever  trodden  by  man  or  woman.  Bar- 
racks now  form  long  streets  upon  its  crest  and 
sides;  practise-trenches,  bombing-schools,  the 
stuffed  and  dangling  sacks  for  bayonet  train- 
ing, musketry  ranges,  and  the  rest,  are  every- 
where. Tennyson,  whose  wandering  ground  it 
once  was,  would  know  it  no  more.  And  this 
camp  is  only  one  of  a  series  which  spread  far 
and  wide  round  the  Aldershot  headquarters. 

Near  my  own  home,  a  park  and  a  wooded 
hillside,  that  two  years  ago  were  carefully 
guarded  even  from  a  neighbour's  foot,  are  now 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  113 

occupied  by  a  large  to^\Ti  of  military  huts, 
which  can  be  seen  for  miles  round.  And  fifteen 
miles  away,  in  a  historic  "chase"  where  Cath- 
arine of  Aragon  lived  while  her  trial  was  pro- 
ceeding in  a  neighbouring  town,  a  duke,  bearing 
one  of  the  great  names  of  England,  has  him- 
self built  a  camp,  housing  1,200  men,  for  the 
recruits  of  his  county  regiments  alone,  and  has 
equipped  it  with  every  necessary,  whether  for 
the  soldier's  life  or  training.  But  everywhere 
— East,  North,  South,  and  West — the  English 
and  Scotch  roads  are  thronged  with  soldiers 
and  horses,  with  trains  of  artillery  wagons  and 
Army  Service  lorries,  with  men  marching  back 
from  night  attacks  or  going  out  to  scout  and 
skirmish  on  the  neighbouring  commons  and 
through  the  most  sacred  game  -  preserves. 
There  are  no  more  trespass  laws  in  England 
— for  the  soldier. 

You  point  to  our  recruiting  difficulties  in 
Parliament.  True  enough.  We  have  our  re- 
cruiting difficulties  still.  Lord  Derby  has  not 
apparently  solved  the  riddle;  for  riddle  it  is. 


114  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

in  a  country  of  voluntary  service,  where  none 
of  the  preparations  necessary  to  fit  conscrip- 
tion into  ordinary  life,  with  its  obligations, 
have  ever  been  made.  The  Government  and 
the  House  of  Commons  are  just  now  wrestling 
with  it  afresh,  and  public  opinion  seems  to  be 
hardening  towards  certain  final  measures  that 
would  have  been  impossible  earlier  in  the  war.* 
The  call  is  still  for  men — more — and  more — 
men!  And  given  the  conditions  of  this  war, 
it  is  small  wonder  that  England  is  restless  till 
they  are  found.  Eut  amid  the  cross  currents 
of  criticism,  I  catch  the  voice  of  Mr.  Walter 
Long,  the  most  practical,  the  least  boastful  of 
men,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  a  few  nights 
ago :  Say  what  you  like,  blame,  criticise,  as  you 
like,  but  "what  this  country  has  done  since 
August,  1914,  is  an  almost  incredible  story." 
And  so  it  is. 

And  now  let  us  follow  some  of  these  khaki- 

*  Since  these  lines  were  written  the  crisis  in  the  Government, 
the  Irish  rising,  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  military  service  bill 
have  happened  in  quick  succession.  The  country  is  still  wait- 
ing (April  28th)  for  the  last  inevitable  step. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  115 

clad  millions  across  the  seas,  through  the  rein- 
forcement camps,  and  the  great  supply  bases, 
towards  that  fierce  reality  of  war  to  which 
everything  tends. 

II 

It  was  about  the  middle  of  February,  after 
my  return  from  the  munition  factories,  that  I 
received  a  programme  from  the  War  Office  of 
a  journey  in  France,  which  I  was  to  be  allowed 
to  make.  I  remember  being  at  first  much  dis- 
satisfied with  it.  It  included  the  names  of  three 
or  four  places  well  known  to  be  the  centres  of 
English  supply  organisation  in  France.  But 
it  did  not  include  any  place  in  or  near  the 
actual  fighting  zone.  To  me,  in  my  ignorance, 
the  places  named  mainly  represented  the  great 
array  of  finely  equipped  hospitals  to  be  found 
everywhere  in  France  in  the  rear  of  our 
Armies;  and  I  was  inclined  to  say  that  I  had 
no  special  knowledge  of  hospital  work,  and 
that  one  could  see  hospitals  in  England,  with 
more  leisure  to  feel  and  talk  with  the  sufferers 


116  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

in  them  than  a  ten  days'  tour  could  give.  A 
friendly  Cabinet  Minister  smiled  when  I  pre- 
sented this  view.  "You  had  better  accept.  You 
will  find  it  very  different  from  what  you  sup- 
pose. The  'back'  of  the  Army  includes  every- 
thing."  He  was  more  than  right! 

The  conditions  of  travelling  at  the  present 
moment,  within  the  region  covered  by  the 
English  military  organisation  in  France,  for  a 
woman  possessing  a  special  War  Office  pass, 
in  addition  to  her  ordinary  passport,  and  un- 
derstood to  be  on  business  which  has  the  good- 
will of  the  Government,  though  in  no  sense 
commissioned  by  it,  are  made  easy  by  the  cour- 
tesy and  kindness  of  everybody  concerned. 
From  the  moment  of  landing  on  the  French 
side,  my  daughter  and  I  passed  into  the  charge 
of  the  military  authorities.  An  officer  accom- 
panied us;  a  War  Office  motor  took  us  from 
place  to  place;  and  everything  that  could  be 
shown  us  in  the  short  ten  days  of  our  tour  was 
freely  open  to  us.  The  trouble,  indeed,  that 
was  taken  to  enable  me  to  give  some  of  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  117 

vividness  of  personal  seeing  to  these  letters  is 
but  one  of  many  proofs,  I  venture  to  think,  of 
that  warm  natural  wish  in  British  minds  that 
America  should  understand  why  we  are  fight- 
ing this  war,  and  how  we  are  fighting  it.  As 
to  myself,  I  have  written  in  complete  freedom, 
affected  only  by  the  absolutely  necessary  re- 
strictions of  the  military  censorship;  and  I 
only  hope  I  may  be  able  to  show  something, 
however  inadequately,  of  the  work  of  men  who 
have  done  a  magnificent  piece  of  organisation, 
far  too  little  realised  even  in  their  own  country. 
For  in  truth  we  in  England  know  very  little 
about  our  bases  abroad;  about  what  it  means 
to  supply  the  ever-growing  needs  of  the  Eng- 
lish Armies  in  France.  The  military  world 
takes  what  has  been  done  for  granted ;  the  gen- 
eral English  public  supposes  that  the  Tom- 
mies, when  their  days  in  the  home  camps  are 
done,  get  "somehow"  conveyed  to  the  front, 
being  "somehow"  equipped,  fed,  clothed, 
nursed,  and  mended,  and  sent  on  their  way 
across  France  in  interminable  lines  of  trains. 


118  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

As  to  the  details  of  the  process,  it  rarely 
troubles  its  head.  The  fact  is,  however,  that 
the  work  of  the  great  supply  bases  abroad,  of 
the  various  Corps  and  Services  connected  with 
them — Army  Ordnance,  Army  Service,  Army 
Medical,  railway  and  motor  transport — is  a 
desperately  interesting  study;  and  during  the 
past  eighteen  months,  under  the  "I.  G.  C." — 
Inspector-General  of  Communications — ^has 
developed  some  of  the  best  brains  in  the  Army. 
Two  days  spent  under  the  guidance  of  the 
Base  Commandant  or  an  officer  of  his  staff 
among  the  docks  and  warehouses  of  a  great 
French  port,  among  the  huts  of  its  reinforce- 
ment camp,  which  contains  more  men  than  Al- 
dershot  before  August,  1914,  or  in  its  work- 
shops of  the  Army  Ordnance  Corps,  gave  me 
my  first  experience  of  the  organising  power 
that  has  gone  to  these  departments  of  the  war. 
The  General  in  command  of  the  base  was  there 
in  the  first  weeks  of  the  struggle  and  during 
the  great  retreat.  He  retired  with  his  staff  to 
Nantes — leaving  only  a  broken  motor-car  be- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  119 

hind  him! — just  about  the  time  that  the  French 
Government  betook  itself  to  Bordeaux.  But 
in  September  he  was  back  again,  and  the  build- 
ing-up process  began,  which  has  since  known 
neither  stop  nor  stay.  That  the  commercial 
needs  of  a  great  French  port  should  have  been 
able  to  accommodate  themselves  as  they  have 
to  the  military  needs  of  the  British  Army 
speaks  loudly  for  the  tact  and  good  feeling  on 
both  sides.  The  task  has  not  been  at  all  times 
an  easy  one;  and  I  could  not  help  thinking  as 
we  walked  together  through  the  crowded  scene, 
that  the  tone  and  temper  of  the  able  man  beside 
me — his  admiration,  simply  expressed,  yet  evi- 
dently profound,  for  the  French  spirit  in  the 
war,  and  for  the  heroic  unity  of  the  country 
through  all  ranks  and  classes,  accounted  for  a 
great  deal.  In  the  presence  of  a  good-will  so 
strong,  difficulties  disappear. 

Look  now  at  this  immense  hangar  or  store- 
house— the  largest  in  the  world — through  which 
we  are  walking.  It  was  completed  three  years 
before  the  war,  partly,  it  is  said,  by  German 


120  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

money,  to  house  the  growing  cotton-trade  of 
the  port.  It  now  houses  a  large  proportion  of 
the  food  of  the  British  Army.  The  hangar  is 
half  a  mile  long,  and  is  bounded  on  one  side 
by  the  docks  where  the  ships  are  discharging, 
and  on  the  other  by  the  railway  lines  where  the 
trains  are  loading  up  for  the  front. 

You  walk  through  avenues  of  bacon,  through 
streets  of  biscuits  and  jam.  On  the  quays  just 
outside,  ships  from  England,  Canada,  Nor- 
way, Argentina,  Australia  are  pouring  out 
their  stores.  Stand  and  watch  the  endless 
cranes  at  work,  and  think  what  English  sea 
power  means !  And  on  the  other  side  watch  the 
packing  of  the  trucks  that  are  going  to  the 
front,  the  order  and  perfection  with  which  the 
requisitions,  large  and  small,  of  every  regiment 
are  supplied. 

One  thinks  of  the  Crimean  scandals.  The 
ghost  of  Florence  Nightingale  seems  to  move 
beside  us,  watching  contentedly  what  has  come 
of  all  that  long-reforming  labour,  dealing  with 
the  health,  the  sanitation,  the  food  and  equip- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  121 

ment  of  the  soldier,  in  which  she  played  her 
part ;  and  one  might  fancy  the  great  shade  paus- 
ing specially  beside  the  wired-in  space  labelled 
"Medical  Comforts,"  and  generally  known  as 
"The  Cage."  Medical  necessaries  are  housed 
elsewhere ;  but  here  are  the  dainties,  the  special 
foods,  the  easing  appliances  of  all  kinds  which 
are  to  make  life  bearable  to  many  a  sorely- 
wounded  man. 

As  to  the  huge  sheds  of  the  Army  Ordnance, 
which  supply  everything  that  the  soldier 
doesn't  eat,  all  metal  stores — nails,  horseshoes, 
oil-cans,  barbed  wire — by  the  ton;  trenching- 
tools,  wheelbarrows,  pickaxes,  razors,  sand- 
bags, knives,  screws,  shovels,  picketing-pegs, 
and  the  like — they  are  of  course  endless;  and 
the  men  who  work  in  them  are  housed  in  one 
of  the  largest  sheds,  in  tiers  of  bunks  from 
floor  to  ceiling. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  part  of  the 
Depot  to  the  outsider  are  the  repairing  sheds 
and  workshops  established  in  a  suburb  of  the 
town  to  which  we  drive  on.    For  this  is  work 


122  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

that  has  never  been  done  before  in  connection 
with  an  army  in  the  field.  Day  by  day  trains 
full  of  articles  for  repair  come  down  from  the 
front.  I  happened  to  see  a  train  of  the  kind, 
later  on,  leaving  a  station  close  to  the  fighting 
line.  Guns,  rifles,  range-finders,  gun-carriages, 
harness,  all  torn  and  useless  uniforms,  tents, 
boots  by  the  thousand,  come  to  this  base  to  be 
repaired,  or  to  be  sent  home  for  transformation 
into  "shoddy"  to  the  Yorkshire  towns.  Noth- 
ing seems  too  large  or  too  small  for  Colonel 
D.'s  department.  Field-glasses,  periscopes, 
water-bottles,  they  arrive  from  the  trenches 
with  the  same  certainty  as  a  wounded  howitzer 
or  machine-gun,  and  are  returned  as  promptly. 

In  one  shed,  my  guide  called  my  attention 
to  shelves  on  which  were  a  number  of  small 
objects  in  china  and  metal.  "They  were  found 
in  kits  left  on  the  field,"  he  says  gently. 
"Wherever  we  can  identify  the  owner,  such 
things  are  carefully  returned  to  his  people. 
These  could  not  be  identified." 

I  took  up  a  little  china  dog,  a  bit  of  coarse 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  123 

French  pottery,  which  some  dead  father  had 
bought,  at  Poperinghe,  perhaps,  or  Bailleul, 
for  the  children  at  home.  Near  by  were  "sou- 
venirs"— bits  of  shell,  of  German  equipment; 
then  some  leaves  of  a  prayer-book,  a  neck- 
medallion  of  a  saint — and  so  on — every  frag- 
ment steeped  in  the  poignancy  of  sudden  death 
— death  in  youth,  at  the  height  of  life. 

The  boot  and  uniform  sheds,  where  500 
French  women  and  girls,  under  soldier-fore- 
men, are  busy,  the  harness-mending  room,  and 
the  engineering  workshops  might  reassure 
those  pessimists  among  us — especially  of  my 
own  sex — who  think  that  the  male  is  naturally 
and  incorrigibly  a  wasteful  animal.  Colonel  D. 
shows  me  the  chart  which  is  the  record  of  his 
work,  and  its  steadily  mounting  efficiency.  He 
began  work  with  140  men,  he  is  now  employing 
more  than  a  thousand,  and  his  repairing  sheds 
are  saving  thousands  of  pounds  a  week  to  the 
British  Government.  He  makes  all  his  own 
power,  and  has  four  or  five  powerful  dynamos 
at  work. 


124  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

We  come  out  into  a  swirl  of  snow,  and  hence- 
forward sightseeing  is  difhcult.  Yet  we  do  our 
best  to  defy  the  weather.  We  tramp  through 
the  deepening  snow  of  the  great  camp,  which 
lines  the  slopes  of  the  hills  above  the  river  and 
the  town,  visiting  its  huts  and  recreation- 
rooms,  its  Cinema  theatre,  and  its  stores,  and 
taking  tea  with  the  Colonel  of  an  Infantry 
Base  Depot,  who  is  to  be  our  escort  on  the 
morrow. 

But  on  the  last  morning  before  we  start  we 
mount  to  the  plateau  above  the  reinforcement 
camp,  where  the  snow  lies  deep  and  the  wind 
blows  one  of  the  sharpest  blasts  of  the  winter. 
Here  are  bodies  of  men  going  through  some  of 
the  last  refinements  of  drill  before  they  start 
for  the  front ;  here  are  trenches  of  all  kinds  and 
patterns,  revetted  in  ways  new  and  old,  and 
planned  according  to  the  latest  experience 
brought  from  the  fighting  line.  The  instructors 
here,  as  at  other  training-camps  in  France,  are 
all  men  returned  from  the  front.  The  men  to 
whom  they  have  to  give  the  final  touch  of  train- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  125 

ing — men  so  near  themselves  to  the  real  thing 
— are  impatient  of  any  other  sort. 

As  we  stand  beside  the  trenches  under  the 
bright  sun  and  piercing  wind,  looking  at  the 
dark  lines  of  British  soldiers  on  the  snow,  and 
listening  to  the  explanations  of  a  most  keen 
and  courteous  officer,  one's  eyes  wander,  on  the 
one  side,  over  the  great  town  and  port,  over 
the  French  coast  and  the  distant  sea,  and  on 
the  other  side,  inland,  over  the  beautiful 
French  landscape  with  its  farms  and  country 
houses.  Everything  one  sees  is  steeped  in  his- 
tory, a  mingled  historj^  in  which  England  and 
France  up  to  five  centuries  ago  bore  an  almost 
equal  share.  Now  again  they  are  mingled  here ; 
all  the  old  enmities  buried  in  a  comradeship 
that  goes  deeper  far  than  they,  a  comradeship 
of  the  spirit  that  will  surely  mould  the  life  of 
both  nations  for  years  to  come. 

How  we  grudged  the  snow  and  the  low- 
sweeping  clouds  and  the  closed  motor,  on  our 
drive  of  the  next  day !  I  remember  little  more 
of  it  than  occasional  glimpses  of  the  tail  cliffs 


126  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

that  stand  sentinel  along  the  river,  a  hasty  look 
at  a  fine  church  above  a  steeply  built  town,  an 
army  lorry  stuck  deep  in  the  snow-drifts,  and 
finally  the  quays  and  ships  of  another  base 
port.  Our  escort,  Colonel  S.,  pilots  us  to  a 
pleasant  hotel  full  of  officers,  mostly  English, 
belonging  to  the  Lines  of  Communications, 
with  a  few  poor  wives  and  mothers  among 
them  who  have  come  over  to  nurse  their 
wounded  in  one  or  other  of  the  innumerable 
hospitals  of  the  base. 

Before  dinner  the  general  commanding  the 
base  had  found  me  out  and  I  had  told  my  story. 

"Oh,  we'll  put  some  notes  together  for  you. 
We  were  up  most  of  last  night.  I  dare  say  we 
shall  be  up  most  of  this.  But  a  little  more  or 
less  doesn't  matter."  I  protested  most  sin- 
cerely. But  it  is  always  the  busiest  men  who 
shoulder  the  extra  burdens ;  and  the  notes  duly 
reached  me.  From  them,  from  the  talk  of 
others  spending  their  last  ounce  of  brain  and 
energy  in  the  service  of  the  base,  and  from  the 
evidence  of  my  own  eyes,  let  me  try  and  draw 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  127 

some  general  picture  of  what  that  service  is; 
Suppose  a  British  officer  speaking: 

Remember  first  that  every  man,  every  horse,  every 
round  of  ammunition,  every  article  of  clothing  and  equip- 
ment, all  the  guns  and  vehicles,  and  nearly  all  the  food 
have  to  be  brought  across  the  English  Channel  to  main' 
tain  and  reinforce  the  ever-grovs^ing  British  Army,  which 
holds  now  so  important  a  share  of  the  fighting  line  in 
France.  The  ports  of  entry  are  already  overtaxed  by 
the  civil  and  military  needs  of  France  herself.  Imagine 
how  difficult  it  is — and  how  the  difficulty  grows  daily 
with  the  steady  increase  of  the  British  Army — to  receive, 
disembark,  accommodate,  and  forward  the  miJtitude  of 
men  and  the  masses  of  material ! 

You  see  the  khaki  in  the  French  streets,  the  mingling 
everywhere  of  French  and  English;  but  the  ordinary 
visitor  can  form  no  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  this  friendly 
invasion.  There  is  no  formal  delimitation  of  areas  or 
spaces,  in  docks,  or  town,  or  railways.  But  gradually 
the  observer  will  realise  that  the  town  is  honeycombed 
with  the  temporary  locations  of  the  British  Army,  which 
everywhere  speckle  the  map  hanging  in  the  office  of  the 
Garrison  Quartermaster.  And  let  him  further  visit  the 
place  where  the  long  lines  of  reinforcement,  training  and 
hospital  camps  are  installed  on  open  ground,  and  old 
England's  mighty  effort  will  scarcely  hide  itself  from  the 
least  intelligent.  Work,  efficiency,  economy  must  be  the 
watchwords  of  a  base.  Its  functions  may  not  be  mag- 
nificent— hut  they  are  war — and  war  is  impossible  unless 
they  are  rightly  carried  out. 

When  we  came  back  from  the  Loire  in  September, 


128  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

after  our  temporary  retreat,  the  British  personnel  at  this 
place  grew  from  1,100  to  11,000  in  a  week.  Now  there 
are  thousands  of  troops  always  passing  through,  thou- 
sands of  men  in  hospital,  thousands  at  work  in  the  docks 
and  storehouses.  And  let  any  one  who  cares  for  horses 
go  and  look  at  the  Remount  Depot  and  the  Veterinary 
Hospitals.  The  whole  treatment  of  horses  in  this  war 
has  been  revolutionised.  Look  at  the  cheap,  ingenious 
stables,  the  comfort  produced  by  the  simplest  means,  the 
kind  quiet  handling;  look  at  the  Convalescent  Horse  De- 
pots, the  operating  theatres,  and  the  pharmacy  stores  in 
the  Veterinary  Hospitals. 

As  to  the  troops  themselves,  every  Regiment  has  its 
own  lines,  for  its  own  reinforcements.  Good  food,  clean 
cooking,  civilised  dining-rooms,  excellent  sanitation — 
the  base  provides  them  all.  It  provides,  too,  whatever 
else  Tommy  Atkins  wants,  and  close  at  hand;  wet  and 
dry  canteens,  libraries,  recreation  huts,  tea  and  coffee 
huts,  palatial  cinemas,  concerts.  And  what  are  the  re- 
sults? Excellent  behaviour;  excellent  relations  between 
the  British  soldier  and  the  French  inhabitants;  absence 
of  all  serious  crime. 

Then  look  at  the  docks.  You  will  see  there  armies  of 
labourers,  and  long  lines  of  ships  discharging  horses, 
timber,  rations,  fodder,  coal,  coke,  petrol.  Or  at  the 
stores  and  depots.  It  would  take  you  days  to  get  any 
idea  of  the  huge  quantities  of  stores,  or  of  the  new  and 
ingenious  means  of  space  economy  and  quick  distribution. 
As  to  the  Works  Department — camps  and  depots  are  put 
up  "while  you  wait"  by  the  R.  E.  officers  and  unskilled 
military  labour.  Add  to  all  this  the  armies  of  clerks, 
despatch  riders,  and  motor-cyclists — and  the  immense 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  129 

hospital  personnel — then,  if  you  make  any  intelligible 
picture  of  it  in  your  mind,  you  will  have  some  idea  of 
what  bases  like  these  mean. 

Pondering  these  notes,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
the  only  way  to  get  some  kind  of  "intelligible 
picture"  in  two  short  days  was  to  examine 
something  in  detail,  and  the  rest  in  general! 
Accordingly,  we  spent  a  long  Sunday  morn- 
ing in  the  Motor  Transport  Depot,  which  is 
the  creation  of  Colonel  B.,  and  perhaps  as 
good  an  example  as  one  could  find  anywhere 
in  France  of  the  organising  talent  of  the  able 
British  ofiicer. 

The  depot  opened  in  a  theatre  on  the  13th 
of  August,  1914.  "It  began,"  says  Colonel 
B.,  "with  a  few  balls  of  string  and  a  bag  of 
nails!"  Its  staff  then  consisted  of  6  officers 
and  91  N.  C.  O.'s  and  men — its  permanent 
staff  at  present  is  about  500.  All  the  drivers 
of  some  20,000  motor  vehicles — nearly  40,000 
men — are  tested  here  and,  if  necessary,  in- 
structed before  going  up  to  the  fighting  lines ; 
and  the  depot  deals  with  350  different  types 


130  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

of  vehicles.  In  round  figures  100,000  separate 
parts  are  now  dealt  with,  stored,  and  arranged 
in  the  depot.  The  system  of  records  and  ac- 
counts is  extraordinarily  perfect,  and  so  in- 
genious that  it  seems  to  work  itself. 

Meanwhile  Colonel  B.'s  relations  with  his 
army  of  chauffeurs,  of  whom  about  1,000  are 
always  housed  on  the  premises,  are  exceedingly 
human  and  friendly  in  spite  of  the  strictness 
of  the  army  discipline.  Most  of  his  men  who 
are  not  married,  the  Colonel  tells  me,  have 
found  a  "friend,"  in  the  town,  one  or  other  of 
its  trimly  dressed  girls,  with  whom  the  English 
mechanic  "walks  out,"  on  Sundays  and  holi- 
days. There  are  many  engagements,  and,  as 
I  gather,  no  misconduct.  Marriage  is  generally 
postponed  till  after  the  war,  owing  to  the  legal 
and  other  difficulties  involved.  But  marriage 
there  will  be  when  peace  comes.  As  to  how  the 
Englishman  and  the  French  girl  communicate, 
there  are  amusing  speculations,  but  little  exact 
knowledge.  There  can  be  small  doubt,  how- 
ever, that  a  number  of  hybrid  words  perfectly 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  131 

understood  by  both  sides  are  gradually  coming 
into  use,  and  if  the  war  lasts  much  longer,  a 
rough  Esperanto  will  have  grown  up  which 
may  leave  its  mark  on  both  languages.  The 
word  "narpoo"  is  a  case  in  point.  It  is  said  to 
be  originally  a  corruption  of  "  il  n'y  a  plus" — 
the  phrase  which  so  often  meets  the  Tommy 
foraging  for  eggs  or  milk  or  fruit.  At  present 
it  means  anything  from  "done  up"  to  "dead." 
Here  is  an  instance  of  it,  told  me  by  a  chaplain 
at  the  front.  He  was  billeted  in  a  farm  with  a 
number  of  men,  and  a  sergeant.  All  the  men, 
from  the  chaplain  to  the  youngest  private,  felt 
a  keen  sympathy  and  admiration  for  the 
women  of  the  farm,  who  were  both  working 
the  land  and  looking  after  their  billetees,  with 
wonderful  pluck  and  energy.  One  evening  the 
chaplain  arriving  at  the  open  door  of  the  farm, 
saw  in  the  kitchen  beyond  it  the  daughter  of 
the  house,  who  had  just  come  in  from  farm, 
work.  She  was  looking  at  a  pile  of  dirty  plates 
and  dishes  which  had  to  be  washed  before  sup- 
per, and  she  gave  a  sigh  of  fatigue.    Suddenly 


132  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

in  the  back  door  on  the  other  side  of  the  kitchen 
appeared  the  sergeant.  He  looked  at  the  girl, 
then  at  the  dishes,  then  again  at  the  girl. 
"Fattigay?"  he  said  cheerfully,  going  up  to 
her.  "Narpoo?  Give 'em  me.  Compree?"  And 
before  she  could  say  a  word  he  had  driven  her 
away,  and  plunged  into  the  work. 

The  general  relations,  indeed,  between  our 
soldiers  and  the  French  population  could  not 
be  better.  General  after  General,  both  in  the 
bases,  and  at  the  front  dwelt  on  this  point.  A 
distinguished  General  commanding  one  of  our 
armies  on  the  line,  spoke  to  me  of  it  with 
emphasis.  "The  testimony  is  universal,  and  it 
is  equally  creditable  to  both  sides."  The  French 
civilian  in  town  and  country  is,  no  doubt, 
profiting  by  the  large  demand  and  prompt 
payments  of  the  British  forces.  But  just  as  in 
the  case  of  the  women  munition  workers,  tliere 
is  infinitely  more  in  it  than  money.  On  the 
British  part  there  is,  in  both  officers  and  men, 
a  burning  sympathy  for  what  France  has  suf- 
fered, whether  from  the  outrages  of  a  brutal 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  133 

enemy;  or  from  the  inevitable  hardships  of  war. 
The  headquarters  of  the  General  I  have  men- 
tioned were  not  more  than  fifteen  or  twenty 
miles  from  towns  where  unspeakable  things 
were  done  by  German  soldiers — officers  no  less 
than  men — in  the  first  weeks  of  the  struggle. 
With  such  deeds  the  French  peasantry  and 
small  townsfolk,  as  they  still  remain  in  Picardy 
and  Artois,  can  and  do  contrast,  day  by  day, 
the  temper,  the  courtesy,  the  humanity  of  the 
British  soldier.  Great  Britain,  of  course,  is  a 
friend  and  ally;  and  Germany  is  the  enemy. 
But  these  French  folk,  these  defenceless  women 
and  children,  laiow  instinctively  that  the  Brit- 
ish Army,  like  their  own,  whether  in  its  officers, 
or  in  its  rank  and  file,  is  incapable,  toward  any 
non-combatant,  of  what  the  German  Army  has 
done  repeatedly,  officially,  and  still  excuses 
and  defends. 

The  signs  of  this  feeling  for  and  sympathy 
with  the  French  civils,  among  our  soldiers,  are 
many.  Here  is  one  story,  slight  but  illumi- 
nating, told  me  by  an  eye-witness.    She  is  one 


134  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

of  a  band  of  women  under  a  noble  chief,  who, 
since  very  early  in  the  war,  have  been  running 
a  canteen  for  soldiers,  night  and  day,  at  the 
large  railway-station  of  the  very  base  I  have 
been  describing,  where  trains  are  perpetually 
arriving  from  and  departing  to  the  front.  In 
the  early  days  of  the  war,  a  refugee  train  ar- 
rived one  afternoon  full  of  helpless  French 
folk,  mainly  of  course  women  and  children, 
and  old  people,  turned  out  of  their  homes  by 
the  German  advance.  In  general,  the  refugees 
were  looked  after  by  the  French  Red  Cross, 
"who  did  it  admirably,  going  along  the  trains 
with  hot  drinks  and  food  and  clothing."  But 
on  this  occasion  there  were  a  number  of  small 
children,  and  some  of  them  got  overlooked  in 
the  hubbub.  "I  found  a  raw  young  Scotchman, 
little  more  than  a  boy,  from  one  of  the  High- 
land regiments,"  with  six  youngsters  clinging 
to  him,  for  whom  he  peremptorily  demanded 
tea.  "He  had  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  his  voice 
was  all  husky  as  he  explained  in  homely  Scotch 
how  the  bairns  had  been  turned  out  of  their 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  135 

homes — how  he  couldn^t  bear  it — and  he  would 
give  them  tea."  A  table  was  found.  "I  pro- 
vided the  milk,  and  he  paid  for  bread  and  but- 
ter and  chocolate,  and  waited  on  and  talked  to 
the  six  little  French  people  himself.  Strange 
to  say,  they  seemed  to  understand  each  other 
quite  well." 

Ill 

It  was  with  this  railway-station  canteen  that 
my  latest  memories  of  the  great  base  are  con- 
cerned.   All  the  afternoon  of  our  second  day 

at was  spent  in  seeing  a  fine  Red  Cross 

hospital,  and  then  in  walking  or  driving  round 
the  endless  reinforcement  and  hospital  camps 
in  the  open  country.  Everywhere  the  same 
vigourous  expanding  organisation,  the  same 
ceaselessly  growing  numbers,  the  same  human- 
ity and  care  in  detail.  "How  many  years  have 
we  been  at  war?"  one  tends  to  ask  oneself  in 
bewilderment,  as  the  spectacle  unrolls  itself. 
"Is  it  possible  that  all  this  is  the  work  of  eigh- 
teen months?"     And  I  am  reminded  of  the 


136  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Scotch  sergeant's  reply  to  his  German  captive, 
who  asked  his  opinion  about  the  duration  of  the 
war.  "I'll  tell  you  what— it's  the  furrst  five 
years  that'll  be  the  worst!"  We  seem — in  the 
bases — to  have  slipped  through  them  already, 
measuring  by  any  of  the  ordinary  ratios  of 
work  to  time.  On  my  return  home,  a  diplomat 
representing  one  of  the  neutral  nations,  told 
me  that  the  Military  Secretary  of  his  staff  had 
been  round  the  English  bases  in  France,  and 
had  come  back  with  his  "eyes  starting  out  of 
his  head."  Having  seen  them  myself,  the 
phrase  seemed  to  me  quite  natural. 

Then,  last  of  all,  as  the  winter  evening  fell, 
we  turned  toward  the  canteen  at  the  railway- 
station.  We  found  it  going  on  in  an  old  goods' 
shed,  simply  fitted  up  with  a  long  tea  and  coffee 
bar,  tables  and  chairs;  and  in  some  small  ad- 
jacent rooms.  It  was  filled  from  end  to  end 
with  a  crowd  of  soldiers,  who  after  many  hours 
of  waiting,  were  just  departing  for  the  front. 
The  old  shabby  room,  with  its  points  of  bright 
light,  and  its  shadowy  sides  and  corners,  made 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  137 

a  Rembrandtesque  setting  for  the  moving 
throng  of  figures.  Some  men  were  crowding 
round  the  bar;  some  were  writing  letters  in 
haste  to  post  before  the  train  went  off;  the 
piano  was  going,  and  a  few,  gathered  round  it, 
were  singing  the  songs  of  the  day,  of  which  the 
choruses  were  sometimes  taken  up  in  the  room. 
The  men — drafts  going  up  to  different  regi- 
ments on  the  hue — appeared  to  me  to  come 
from  many  parts.  The  broad  Yorkshire  and 
Cumbrian  speech,  Scotch,  the  cockney  of  the 
Home  Counties,  the  Northumberland  burr,  the 
tongues  of  Devon  and  Somerset — one  seemed 
to  hear  them  all  in  turn.  The  demands  at  the 
counter  had  slackened  a  little,  and  I  was  pres- 
ently listening  to  some  of  the  talk  of  the  inde- 
fatigable helpers  who  work  this  thing  night 
and  day.  One  of  them  drew  a  picture  of  the 
Canadians,  the  indomitable  fighters  of  Ypres 
and  Loos,  of  their  breathless  energy,  and  im- 
patience of  anything  but  the  quickest  pace  of 
life,  their  appetites! — half  a  dozen  hard-boiled 
eggs,  at  Sd  each,  swallowed  down  in  a  moment 


138  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

of  time;  then  of  the  French-Canadians,  their 
Old  World  French,  their  old-world  Catholi- 
cism, simple  and  passionate.  One  of  these  last 
asked  if  there  was  any  chance  of  his  being  sent 
to  Egypt.  "Why  are  you  so  anxious  to  go  to 
Egypt  ?"  "Because  it  was  there  the  Holy  Fam- 
ily rested,"  said  the  lad  shyly.  The  lady  to 
whom  he  spoke  described  to  him  the  tree  and 
the  Holy  Well  in  St.  Georgius,  and  he  listened 
entranced. 

Sometimes  a  rough  lot  fill  the  canteen, 
drawn  from  the  poorest  class,  perhaps,  of  an 
English  seaport.  They  hustle  for  their  food, 
shout  at  the  helpers,  and  seem  to  have  no 
notion  that  such  words  as  "please"  and  "thank 
you"  exist.  After  three  or  four  hours  of  bat- 
tling with  such  an  apparently  mannerless  crew 
one  of  the  helpers  saw  them  depart  to  the  plat- 
form where  their  train  was  waiting  for  them, 
with  very  natural  relief.  But  they  were  no 
sooner  gone,  when  a  guardsman,  with  the  man- 
ners, the  stature,  and  the  smartness  of  his  kind, 
came  back  to  the  counter,  and  asked  to  speak 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  139 

to  the  lady  in  charge  of  it.  "Those  chaps,  Miss, 
what  have  just  gone  out,"  he  said  apologet- 
ically, "have  never  been  used  to  ladies,  and  they 
don't  know  what  to  say  to  them.  So  they  asked 
me  just  to  come  in  and  say  for  them  they  were 
very  much  obliged  for  all  the  ladies'  kindness, 
but  they  couldn't  say  it  themselves."  The  tired 
helper  was  suddenly  too  choky  to  answer.  The 
message,  the  choice  of  the  messenger,  as  one 
sure  to  do  "the  right  thing,"  were  both  so 
touching. 

But  there  was  a  sudden  movement  in  the 
crowd.  The  train  was  up.  We  all  surged  out 
upon  the  platform,  and  I  watched  the  embarka- 
tion— the  endless  train  engulfing  its  hundreds 
of  men.  Just  as  I  had  seen  the  food  and  equip- 
ment trains  going  up  from  the  first  base  laden 
with  everything  necessary  to  replace  the  daily 
waste  of  the  army,  so  here  was  the  train  of 
human  material,  going  up  to  replace  the  daily 
waste  of  men.  After  many  hours  of  travelling, 
and  perhaps  some  of  rest,  these  young  soldiers 
— how  young  most  of  them  were ! — would  find 


140  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

themselves  face  to  face  with  the  sharpest  reali- 
ties of  war.  I  thought  of  what  I  had  seen  in 
the  Red  Cross  hospital  that  afternoon — "what 
man  has  made  of  man" — the  wreck  of  youth 
and  strength,  the  hideous  pain,  the  helpless  dis- 
ablement. 

But  the  station  rang  with  laughter  and  talk- 
Some  one  in  the  canteen  began  to  play  "Keep 
the  Home  Fires  Burning" — and  the  men  in  the 
train  joined  in,  though  not  very  heartily,  for 
as  one  or  two  took  care  to  tell  me,  laughingly 
— "That  and  'Tipperary'  are  awfully  stale 
now!"     A   bright-faced   lad    discussed   with 

D how  long  the  war  would  last.     "And 

shan't  we  miss  it  when  it's  done!"  he  said,  with 
a  jesting  farewell  to  us,  as  he  jumped  into  the 
train  which  had  begun  to  move.  Slowly,  slowly 
it  passed  out  of  sight,  amid  waves  of  singing 
and  the  shouting  of  good-byes .... 

It  was  late  that  evening,  when  after  much 
talk  with  various  officers,  I  went  up  to  my 
room  to  try  and  write,  bewildered  by  a  multi- 
tude of  impressions — impressions   of  human 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  141 

energy,  human  intelligence,  human  suffering. 
What  England  is  doing  in  this  country  will 
leave,  it  seems  to  me,  indelible  marks  upon  the 
national  character.  I  feel  a  natural  pride,  as  I 
sit  thinking  over  the  day,  in  all  this  British 
efficiency  and  power,  and  a  quick  joy  in  the 
consciousness  of  our  fellowship  with  France, 
and  hers  with  us.  But  the  struggle  at  Verdun 
is  still  in  its  first  intensity,  and  when  I  have 
read  all  that  the  evening  newspapers  contain 
about  it,  there  stirs  in  me  a  fresh  realisation 
of  the  meaning  of  what  I  have  been  seeing. 
In.  these  great  bases,  in  the  marvellous  rail- 
way organisation,  in  the  handling  of  the  vast 
motor  transport  in  all  its  forms,  in  the  feeding 
and  equipment  of  the  British  Army,  we  have 
the  scaffolding  and  preparation  of  war,  which, 
both  in  the  French  and  English  Armies,  have 
now  reached  a  perfection  undreamt  of  when 
the  contest  began.  But  the  war  itself — the 
deadly  struggle  of  that  distant  line  to  which 
it  all  tends?  It  is  in  the  flash  and  roar  of  the 
guns,  in  the  courage  and  endurance  of  the 


142  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

fighting  man,  that  all  this  travail  of  brain  and 
muscle  speaks  at  last.  At  that  courage  and 
endurance,  women,  after  all,  can  only  guess — 
through  whatever  rending  of  their  own  hearts. 
But  I  was  to  come  somewhat  nearer  to  it 
than  I  thought  then.  The  morrow  brought 
surprise. 


y 

Dear  H. 

Our  journey  farther  north  through  the  deep 
February  snow  was  scarcely  less  striking  as  an 
illustration  of  Great  Britain's  constantly  grow- 
ing share  in  the  war  than  the  sight  of  the  great 
supply  bases  themselves.  The  first  part  of  it, 
indeed,  led  over  solitary  uplands,  where  the 
chained  wheels  of  the  motor  rocked  in  the  snow, 
and  our  military  chauffeur  dared  make  no  stop, 
for  fear  he  should  never  be  able  to  start  again. 
All  that  seemed  alive  in  the  white  landscape 
were  the  partridges — sometimes  in  great  flocks 
— which  scudded  at  our  approach,  or  occasional 
groups  of  hares  in  the  middle  distance  holding 
winter  parley.  The  road  seemed  interminably 
long  and  straight,  and  ours  were  almost  the 
first  tracks  in  it.  The  snow  came  down  inces- 
santly, and  once  or  twice  it  looked  as  though 
we  should  be  left  stranded  in  the  white  wilder- 
ness. 

J<43 


144  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

But  after  a  third  of  the  journey  was  over, 
the  snow  began  to  lessen  and  the  roads  to  clear. 
We  dropped  first  into  a  seaport  town  which 
offered  much  the  same  mingled  scene  of  French 
and  English,  of  English  nurses,  and  French 
poilus,  of  unloading  ships,  and  British  soldiers, 
as  the  bases  we  had  left,  only  on  a  smaller  scale. 
And  beyond  the  town  we  climbed  again  on  to 
the  high  land,  through  a  beautiful  country  of 
interwoven  downs,  and  more  plentiful  habita- 
tion. Soon,  indeed,  the  roads  began  to  show 
the  signs  of  war — a  village  or  small  town,  its 
picturesque  market-place  filled  with  a  park  of 
artillery  wagons;  roads  lined  with  motor  lor- 
ries with  the  painted  shell  upon  them  that  tells 
ammunition;  British  artillerymen  in  khaki, 
bringing  a  band  of  horses  out  of  a  snow-bound 
farm;  closed  motor-cars  filled  with  officers 
hurrying  past;  then  an  open  car  with  King's 
Messengers,  tall,  soldierly  figures,  looking  in 
some  astonishment  at  the  two  ladies,  as  they 
hurry  by.  And  who  or  what  is  this  horseman 
looming  out  of  the  sleet — like  a  figure  from  a 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  145 

piece  of  Indian  or  Persian  embroidery,  tur- 
baned  and  swarthy,  his  cloak  swelling  out 
round  his  handsome  head  and  shoulders,  the 
buildings  of  a  Norman  farm  behind  him? 
"There  are  a  few  Indian  cavalry  about  here," 
says  our  guide — "they  are  billeted  in  the 
farms."  And  presently  the  road  is  full  of 
them.  Their  Eastern  forms,  their  dark,  intent 
faces  pass  strangely  through  the  Norman 
landscape. 

Now  we  are  only  some  forty  miles  from  the 
line,  and  we  presently  reach  another  town  con- 
taining an  important  British  Headquarters, 
where  we  are  to  stop  for  luncheon.  The  inn 
at  which  we  put  up  is  like  the  song  in  "Twelfth 
Night,"  "old  and  plain" — and  when  lunch  is 
done,  our  Colonel  goes  to  pay  an  official  call 
at  Headquarters,  and  my  daughter  and  I  make 
our  way  to  the  historic  church  of  the  town.  The 
Colonel  joins  us  here  with  another  officer,  who 
brings  the  amazing  news  that  "G.  H.  Q." — 
General  Headquarters — that  mysterious  centre 
and  brain  of  all  things — invites  us  for  two 


146  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

days!  If  we  accept,  an  officer  will  come  for  us 
on  the  morning  of  March  1st  to  our  hotel  in 
Boulogne  and  take  us  by  motor,  some  forty 
miles,  to  the  guest-house  where  G.  H.  Q.  puts 
up  its  visitors.  ^^ Accept!"  Ah,  if  one  could 
only  forget  for  a  moment  the  human  facts  be- 
hind the  absorbing  interest  and  excitement  of 
this  journey,  one  might  be  content  to  feel  only 
the  stir  of  quickened  pulses,  of  gratitude  for  a 
further  opportunity  so  tremendous. 

As  it  was,  I  saw  all  the  journey  hencefor- 
ward with  new  eyes,  because  of  that  to  which 
it  was  bringing  us.  On  we  sped,  through  the 
French  countryside,  past  a  great  forest  lying 
black  on  the  edge  of  the  white  horizon — I  open 
my  map  and  find  it  marked  Bois  de  Crecy! — 
past  another  old  town,  with  Agincourt  a  few 
miles  to  the  east,  and  so  into  a  region  of  pine 
and  sand  that  borders  the  sea.  Darkness  comes 
down,  and  we  miss  our  way.  What  are  these 
lines  of  light  among  the  pine  woods?  Another 
military  and  hospital  camp,  which  we  are  to  see 
on  the  morrow — so  we  discover  at  last,   ^ut  we 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  147 

have  overshot  our  goal,  and  must  grope  our 
way  back  through  the  pine  woods  to  the  sea- 
shore, where  a  little  primitive  hotel,  built  for 
the  summer,  with  walls  that  seem  to  be  made 
of  brown  paper,  receives  us.  But  we  have 
motored  far  that  day,  and  greet  it  joyfully. 

The  following  morning  we  woke  to  a  silvery 
sunlight,  with,  at  last,  some  promise  of  spring 
over  a  land  cleared  of  snow.  The  day  was  spent 
in  going  through  a  camp  which  has  been  set 
down  in  one  of  the  pleasantest  and  healthiest 
spots  of  France,  a  favourite  haunt  of  French 
artists  before  the  war.  Now  the  sandy  slopes, 
whence  the  pines,  alack,  have  been  cut  away, 
are  occupied  by  a  British  reinforcement  camp, 
by  long  lines  of  hospitals,  by  a  convalescent 
depot,  and  by  the  training-grounds,  where,  as 
at  other  bases,  the  newly  arrived  troops  are 
put  through  their  last  instruction  before  going 
to  the  front.  As  usual,  the  magnitude  of  what 
has  been  done  in  one  short  year  filled  one  with 
amazement.  Here  is  the  bare  catalogue:  In- 
fantry Base  Depots,  i.  e.  sleeping  and  mess- 


148  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

quarters,  for  thousands  of  men  belonging  to 
the  new  armies;  16  hospitals  with  21,000  beds, 
3  rifle  ranges;  2  training-camps;  a  machine- 
gun  training-school;  a  vast  laundry  worked 
by  Frenchwomen  under  British  organisation, 
which  washes  for  all  the  hospitals,  30,000  pieces 
a  day;  recreation  huts  of  all  types  and  kinds, 
official  and  voluntary;  a  Cinema  theatre,  seat- 
ing 800  men,  with  performances  twice  a  day; 
nurses'  clubs;  officers'  clubs;  a  Supply  Depot 
for  food;  an  Ordnance  Depot  for  everything 
that  is  not  food;  new  sidings  to  the  railway, 
where  1,000  men  can  be  entrained  on  the  one 
side,  while  1,000  men  are  detraining  on  the 
other;  or  two  full  ambulance-trains  can  come 
in  and  go  out;  a  Convalescent  Depot  of  2,000 
patients,  and  a  Convalescent  Horse  Depot  of 
2,000  horses,  etcetera.  And  this  is  the  work 
accomplished  since  last  April  in  one  camp. 

Yet,  as  I  look  back  upon  it,  my  chief  impres- 
sion of  that  long  day  is  an  impression,  first, 
of  endless  hospital  huts  and  marquees,  with 
their  rows  of  beds,  in  which  the  pale  or  flushed 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  149 

faces  are  generally  ready — unless  pain  or  wear- 
iness forbid — as  a  visitor  ventures  timidly  near, 
to  turn  and  smile  in  response  to  the  few  halt-^ 
ing  words  of  sympathy  or  inquiry  which  are 
all  one  can  find  to  say;  and,  n6xt,  of  such  a 
wealth  of  skill,  and  pity,  and  devotion  poured 
out  upon  this  terrible  human  need,  as  makes 
one  thank  God  for  doctors,  and  nurses,  and 
bright-faced  V.  A.  D.'s.    After  all,  one  trem- 
blingly asks  oneself,  in  spite  of  the  appalling 
facts  of  wounds,  and  death,  and  violence  in 
which  the  human  world  is  now  steeped,  is  it 
yet  possible,  is  it  yet  true,  that  the  ultimate 
thing,   the   final   power   behind   the   veil — to 
which  at  least  this  vast  linked  spectacle  of  suf- 
fering and  tenderness,  here  in  this  great  camp, 
testifies — is  not  Force,  but  Love?    Is  this  the 
mysterious  message  which  seems  to  breathe 
from  these  crowded  wards — to  make  them  just 
bearable.    Let  me  recollect  the  open  door  of 
an  operating  theatre,  and  a  young  officer,  quite 
a  boy,  lying  there  with  a  bullet  in  his  chest, 
which  the  surgeons  were  just  about  to  try  and 


150  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

extract.  The  fine,  pale  features  of  the  wounded 
man,  the  faces  of  the  surgeon  and  the  nurses, 
so  intent  and  cheerfully  absorbed,  the  shining 
surfaces  and  appliances  of  the  wliite  room — 
stamp  themselves  on  memory.   I  recollect,  too, 

one  John  S ,  a  very  bad  case,  a  private. 

*'Oh,  you  must  come  and  see  John  S ,"  says 

one  of  the  Sisters.  "We  get  all  the  little  dis- 
tractions we  can  for  John.  Will  he  recover? 
Well,  we  thought  so — but" — ^her  face  changes 
gravely — "John  himself  seems  to  have  made 
up  his  mind  lately.  He  knows — but  he  never 
complains."  Knows  what?  We  go  to  see  him, 
and  he  turns  round  philosophically  from  his 
tea.  "Oh,  I'm  all  right — a  bit  tired — that's 
all."  And  then  a  smile  passes  between  him  and 
his  nurse.  He  has  lost  a  leg,  he  has  a  deep 
wound  in  his  back  which  won't  heal,  which  is 
draining    his    life    away — poor,    poor    John 

S !    Close  by  is  a  short,  plain  man,  with 

a  look  of  fevered  and  patient  endurance  that 
haunts  one  now  to  think  of.  "It's  my  eyes.  I'm 
afraid  they're  getting  worse.    I  was  hit  in  the 


ENGLAND'S   EFFORT  151 

head,  you  see.  Yes,  the  pain's  bad — some- 
times." The  nurse  looks  at  him  anxiously  as 
we  pass,  and  explains  what  is  being  tried  to 
give  relief. 

This  devotion  of  the  nurses — how  can  one 
ever  say  enough  of  it!  I  recall  the  wrath  of 
a  medical  officer  in  charge  of  a  large  hospital 
at  Rouen.  "Why  don't  they  give  more  Red 
Crosses  to  the  working  nurses?  They  don't 
get  half  enough  recognition.  I  have  a  nurse 
here  who  has  been  twelve  months  in  the  oper- 
ating theatre.  She  ought  to  have  a  V.  C! — 
It's  worth  it." 

And  here  is  a  dark-eyed  young  officer  who 
had  come  from  a  distant  colony  to  fight  for 
England.  I  find  him  in  an  officer's  hospital, 
established  not  long  after  the  war  broke  out, 
in  a  former  Casino,  where  the  huge  baccarat- 
room  has  been  turned  into  two  large  and  splen- 
did wards.  He  is  courteously  ready  to  talk 
about  his  wound,  but  much  more  ready  to  talk 
about  his  Sister. 

"It's  simply  wonderful  what  they  do  for  us!" 


152  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

he  says,  all  his  face  lighting  up.  "Wlien  I  was 
worst  there  wasn't  an  hour  in  the  day  or  night 
my  Sister  wasn't  ready  to  try  anything  in  the 
world  to  help  me.    But  they're  all  like  that." 

Let  me  here  gratefully  recall,  also,  the  hos- 
pitals organised  by  the  Universities  of  Chicago 
and  Harvard,  entirely  staffed  by  American 
Sisters  and  Doctors,  each  of  them  providing  34 
doctors  and  80  nurses,  and  dealing  with  1,040 
patients.  Harvard  has  maintained  a  general 
hospital  with  the  British  Force  in  France  since 
July,  1915.  The  first  passages  and  uniforms 
were  paid  for  by  the  British  Government,  but 
the  University  has  itself  paid  all  passages,  and 
provided  all  uniforms  since  the  start;  and  it  is 
proposed,  I  am  told,  to  carry  on  this  generous 
help  indefinitely. 

Twenty  thousand  wounded! — while  every 
day  the  ambulance  trains  come  and  go  from 
the  front,  or  to  other  bases — there  to  fill  up  one 
or  other  of  the  splendid  hospital  ships  that  take 
our  brave  fellows  back  to  England,  and  home, 
and  rest.    And  this  city  of  hospitals,  under  its 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  153 

hard-pressed  medical  chief,  with  all  its  wealth 
of  scientific  invention,  and  painsaving  device, 
and  unremitting  care,  with  its  wonderful  health 
and  recovery  statistics,  has  been  the  growth  of 
just  twelve  months.  The  mind  wavers  between 
the  two  opposing  images  it  suggests :  war  and 
its  havoc  on  the  one  hand — the  power  of  the 
human  brain  and  the  goodness  of  the  human 
heart  on  the  other. 

II 

It  was  late  on  the  29th  of  February  that  we 
reached  our  next  resting-place,  to  find  a  kind 
greeting  from  another  Base  Commandant  and 
final  directions  for  our  journey  of  the  morrow. 
jWe  put  up  at  one  of  the  old  commercial  inns  of 
the  town  (it  is  not  easy  to  find  hotel  quarters 
of  any  kind  just  now,  when  every  building  at 
all  suitable  has  been  pressed  into  the  hospital 
service)  and  I  found  delight  in  watching  the 
various  types  of  French  officers,  naval  and  mil- 
itary, who  came  in  to  the  table  d'hote^  plunging 
as  soon  as  they  had  thrown  off  their  caps  and 


154.  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

cloaks,  and  while  they  waited  for  their  con- 
somme, into  the  papers  with  the  latest  news 
of  Verdun.  But  we  were  too  tired  to  try  and 
talk!  The  morning  came  quickly,  and  with 
it  our  escort  from  G.  H.  Q.  We  said  good-bye 
to  Colonel  S.,  who  had  guided  our  journey  so 
smoothly  through  all  the  fierce  drawbacks  of 
the  weather,  and  made  friends  at  once  with  our 
new  guide,  the  staff-officer  who  deals  with  the 
guests  of  G.  H.  Q.  Never  shall  I  forget  that 
morning's  journey!  I  find  in  my  notes:  "A 
beautiful  drive — far  more  beautiful  than  I  had 
expected — over  undulating  country,  with  dis- 
tant views  of  interlocking  downs,  and  along 
typical  French  roads,  tree  or  forest  bordered, 
running  straight  as  a  line  up-hill  and  down- 
hill, over  upland  and  plain.  One  exquisite  point 
of  view  especially  comes  back  to  me,  where  a 
road  to  the  coast — that  coast  which  the  Ger- 
mans so  nearly  reached! — diverged  upon  our 
left,  and  all  the  lowlands  westward  came  into 
sight.  It  was  pure  Turner,  the  soft  sunlight  of 
the  day,  with  its  blue  shadows,  and  pale-blue 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  156 

sky;  the  yellow  chalk  hills,  still  marked  with 
streaks  of  snow ;  the  woods,  purple  and  madder 
brown,  the  distances  ethereally  blue;  and  the 
villages,  bare  and  unlovely  compared  with  the 
villages  of  Kent  and  Sussex,  but  expressing  a 
strong  old  historic  life,  sprung  from  the  soil, 
and  one  with  it.  The  first  distant  glimpse,  as 
we  turned  a  hill-corner,  of  the  old  town  which 
was  our  destination — extraordinarily  fine! — 
its  ancient  church  a  towered  mass  of  luminous 
grey  under  the  sunshine,  gathering  the  tiled 
roofs  into  one  harmonious  whole." 

But  we  avoided  the  town  itself  and  found 
ourselves  presently  descending  an  avenue  of 
trees  to  the  eighteenth-century  chateau,  which 
is  used  by  G.  H.  Q.  as  a  hostel  for  its  guests 
— allied  and  neutral  correspondents,  military 
attaches,  special  missions,  and  the  like.  In  a 
few  minutes  I  found  myself  standing  bewil- 
dered by  the  strangeness  and  the  interest  of  it 
all,  in  a  charming  Louis-Quinze  room,  plain 
and  simple  in  the  true  manner  of  the  genuinf- 
French  country  house,  but  with  graceful  pan- 


156  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

elled  walls,  an  old  armoire  of  the  date,  windows 
wide  open  to  the  spring  sun,  and  a  half -wild 
garden  outside.  A  femme  de  menage^  much 
surprised  to  be  waiting  on  two  ladies,  comes  to 
look  after  us.  And  this  is  France! — and  we 
are  only  thirty  miles  from  that  fighting  line, 
which  has  drawn  our  English  hearts  to  it  all 
these  days. 

A  map  is  waiting  for  each  of  us  down-stairs, 
and  we  are  told,  roughly,  where  it  is  proposed 
to  take  us.  A  hurried  lunch,  and  we  are  in  the 

motor  again,  with  Captain sitting  in  front. 

"You  have  your  passes?"  he  asks  us,  and  we 
anxiously  verify  the  new  and  precious  papers 
that  brought  us  from  our  last  stage,  and  will 
have  to  be  shown  on  our  way.  We  drive  first 
to  Arques,  and  Hazebrouck,  then  southeast. 
At  a  certain  village  we  call  at  the  Divisional 
Headquarters.  The  General  comes  out  him- 
self, and  proposes  to  guide  us  on.  "I  will  take 
you  as  near  to  the  fighting  line  as  I  can." 

On  we  went,  in  two  motors;  the  General 
with  me.  Captain and  D.  following.    We 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  157 

passed  through  three  villages,  and  after  the 
first  we  were  within  shell  range  of  the  German 
batteries  ahead.  But  I  cannot  remember  giv- 
ing a  thought  to  the  fact,  so  absorbing  to  the 
unaccustomed  eye  were  all  the  accumulating 
signs  of  the  actual  battle-line ;  the  endless  rows 
of  motor-lorries,  either  coming  back  from,  or 
going  up  to  the  front,  now  with  food,  now  with 
ammunition,  reserve  trenches  to  right  and  left 
of  the  road;  a  "dump"  or  food-station,  whence 
carts  filled  from  the  heavy  lorries  go  actually 
up  to  the  trenches,  lines  of  artillery-wagons, 
parks  of  ammunition,  or  motor-ambulances, 
long  lines  of  picketed  horses,  motor-cyclists 
dashing  past.  In  one  village  we  saw  a  merry 
crowd  in  the  little  place  gathered  round  a  field- 
kitchen  whence  came  an  excellent  fragrance  of 
good  stew.  A  number  of  the  men  were  wear- 
ing leeks  in  their  ears  for  St.  David's  Day. 
"You're  Welsh,  then?"  I  said  to  one  of  the 
cooks  (by  this  time  we  had  left  the  motor  and 
were  walking).  "I'm  not!"  said  the  little 
fellow,  with  a  laughing  look.     "It's  St.  Pat- 


158  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

rick's  Day  I'm  waitin'  for!  But  I've  no  objec- 
tion to  givin'  St.  David  a  turn !" 

He  opened  his  kitchen  to  show  me  the  good 
things  going  on,  and  as  we  moved  away  there 
came  up  a  marching  platoon  of  men  from  the 
trenches,  who  had  done  their  allotted  time  there 
and  were  coming  back  to  billets.  The  General 
went  to  greet  them.  "Well,  my  boys,  you 
could  stick  it  all  right?"  It  was  good  to  see  the 
lightening  on  the  tired  faces,  and  to  watch  the 
group  disappear  into  the  cheerful  hubbub  of 
the  village. 

We  walked  on,  and  outside  the  village  I 
heard  the  guns  for  the  first  time.  We  were 
now  "actually  in  the  battle,"  according  to  my 
companion,  and  a  shell  was  quite  possible, 
though  not  probable.  Again,  I  can't  remember 
that  the  fact  made  any  impression  upon  us. 
We  were  watching  now  parties  of  men  at  reg- 
ular intervals  sitting  waiting  in  the  fields  be- 
side the  road,  with  their  rifles  and  kits  on  the 
grass  near  them.  They  were  waiting  for  the 
signal  to  move  up  toward  the  firing  line  as  soon 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  159 

as  the  dusk  was  further  advanced.  "We  shall 
meet  them  later,"  said  the  General,  "as  we 
come  back." 

At  the  same  moment  he  turned  to  address  a 
young  artillery-officer  in  the  road:  "Is  your 
gun  near  here?"  "Yes,  sir,  I  was  just  going 
back  to  it."  He  was  asked  to  show  us  the  way. 
As  we  followed  I  noticed  the  white  puff  of  a 
shell,  far  ahead,  over  the  flat,  ditch-lined  fields ; 
a  captive  balloon  was  making  observations 
about  half  a  mile  in  front,  and  an  aeroplane 
passed  over  our  heads.     "Ah,  not  a  Boche," 

said  Captain regretfully,  "but  we  brought 

a  Boche  down  here  yesterday,  just  over  this 
village — a  splendid  fight." 

Meanwhile,  the  artillery  fire  was  quickening. 
We  reached  a  ruined  village  from  which  all 
normal  inhabitants  had  been  long  since  cleared 
away.  The  shattered  church  was  there,  and  I 
noticed  a  large  crucifix  quite  intact  still  hang- 
ing on  its  chancel  wall.  A  little  farther  and  the 
boyish  artillery-officer,  our  leader,  who  had 
been  by  this  time  joined  by  a  comrade,  turned 


160  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  beckoned  to  the  General.  Presently  we 
were  creeping  through  seas  of  mud  down  into 
the  gun  emplacement,  so  carefully  concealed 
that  no  aeroplane  overhead  could  guess  it. 

There  it  was — ^how  many  of  its  fellows  I  had 
seen  in  the  Midland  and  northern  workshops! 
— its  muzzle  just  showing  in  the  dark,  and  nine 
or  ten  high-explosive  shells  lying  on  the  bench 
in  front  of  the  breech.  One  is  put  in.  We 
stand  back  a  little,  and  a  sergeant  tells  me  to 
put  my  fingers  in  my  ears  and  look  straight  at 
the  gun.  Then  comes  the  shock — not  so  vio- 
lent as  I  had  expected — and  the  cartridge-case 
drops  out.  The  shell  has  sped  on  its  way  to 
the  German  trenches — with  what  result  to 
human  flesh  and  blood?  But  I  remember 
thinking  very  little  of  that — till  afterwards. 
At  the  time,  the  excitement  of  the  shot  and  of 
watching  that  little  group  of  men  in  the  dark- 
ness held  all  one's  nerves  gripped. 

In  a  few  more  minutes  we  were  scrambling 
out  again  through  the  deep,  muddy  trench  lead- 
ing to  the  dugout,  promising  to  come  back  to 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  161 

tea  with  the  officers,  in  their  billet,  when  our 
walk  was  done. 

Now  indeed  we  were  "in  the  battle"!  Our 
own  guns  were  thundering  awajr  behind  us, 
and  the  road  was  more  and  more  broken  up  by- 
shell  holes.  "Look  at  that  group  of  trees  to 
your  left — beyond  it  is  Neuve  Chapelle,"  said 
our  guide.  "And  you  see  those  ruined  cot- 
tages, straight  ahead,  and  the  wood  behind." 
He  named  a  wood  thrice  famous  in  the  history 
of  the  war.  "Our  lines  are  just  beyond  the 
cottages,  and  the  German  lines  just  in  front 
of  the  wood.  How  far  are  we  from  them? 
Three-quarters  of  a  mile."  It  was  discussed 
whether  we  should  be  taken  zigzag  through  the 
fields  to  the  entrance  of  the  communication- 
trench.    But  the  firing  was  getting  hotter,  and 

Captain was  evidently  relieved  when  we 

elected  to  turn  back.  Shall  I  always  regret 
that  lost  opportunity?  You  did  ask  me  to 
write  something  about  "the  life  of  the  soldiers 
in  the  trenches" — and  that  was  the  nearest  that 
any  woman  could  personally  have  come  to  it! 


162  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

But  I  doubt  whether  anything  more — any- 
thing, at  least,  that  was  possible — could  have 
deepened  the  whole  effect.  We  had  been  al- 
ready nearer  than  any  woman — even  a  nurse 
— has  been,  in  this  war,  to  the  actual  fighting 
on  the  English  line,  and  the  cup  of  impres- 
sions was  full. 

As  we  turned  back,  I  noticed  a  little  ruined 
cottage,  with  a  Red  Cross  flag  floating.  Our 
guide  explained  that  it  was  a  field  dressing- 
station.  It  was  not  for  us — who  could  not  help 
— to  ask  to  go  in.  But  the  thought  of  it — ^there 
were  some  badly  wounded  in  it — pursued  me 
as  we  walked  on  through  the  beautiful  evening. 

A  little  farther  we  came  across  what  I  think 
moved  me  more  than  anything  else  in  that 
crowded  hour — those  same  companies  of  men 
we  had  seen  sitting  waiting  in  the  fields,  now 
marching  quietly,  spaced  one  behind  the  other, 
up  to  the  trenches,  to  take  their  turn  there. 
Every  day  I  am  accustomed  to  see  bodies, 
small  and  large,  of  khaki-clad  men,  marching 
through  these  Hertfordshire  lanes.     But  this 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  163 

was  different.  The  bearing  was  erect  and 
manly,  the  faces  perfectly  cheerful;  but  there 
was  the  seriousness  in  them  of  men  who  knew 
well  the  work  to  which  they  were  going.  I 
caught  a  little  quiet  whistling,  sometimes,  but 
no  singing.  We  greeted  them  as  they  passed, 
with  a  shy  "Good  luck!"  and  they  smiled  shyly 
back,  surprised,  of  course,  to  see  a  couple  of 
women  on  that  road.  But  there  was  no  shyness 
towards  the  General.  It  was  very  evident  that 
the  relations  between  him  and  them  were  as 
good  as  affection  and  confidence  on  both  sides 
could  make  them. 

I  still  see  the  bright  tea-table  in  that  corner 
of  a  ruined  farm,  where  our  young  officers  pres- 
ently greeted  us — the  General  marking  our 
maps  to  make  clear  where  he  had  actually  been 
— ^the  Captain  of  the  battery  springing  up  to 
show  off  his  gramophone — while  the  guns 
crashed  at  intervals  close  beside  us,  range- 
finding,  probably,  searching  out  a  portion  of 
the  German  line,  under  the  direction  of  some 
hidden  observer  with  his  telephone.     It  was 


164  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

over  all  too  quickly.  Time  was  up,  and  soon 
the  motor  was  speeding  back  towards  the 
Divisional  Headquarters.  The  General  and  I 
talked  of  war,  and  what  could  be  done  to  stop 
it.  A  more  practical  religion  "lifting  mankind 
again"? — a  new  St.  Francis,  preaching  the  old 
things  in  new  ways?  "But  in  this  war  we  had 
and  we  have  no  choice.  We  are  fighting  for 
civilisation  and  freedom,  and  we  must  go  on 
Jill  we  win." 

Ill 

It  was  long  before  I  closed  my  eyes  in  the 
pretty  room  of  the  old  chateau,  after  an  evening 
spent  in  talk  with  some  officers  of  the  Head- 
quarters Staff.  When  I  woke  in  the  dawn  I 
little  guessed  what  the  day  (March  2nd)  was 
to  bring  forth,  or  what  was  already  happening 
thirty  miles  away  on  the  firing  line.  Zelie,  the 
femme  de  menage,  brought  us  our  breakfast 
to  our  room,  coffee  and  bread  and  eggs,  and 
by  half-past  nine  we  were  down-stairs,  booted 
and  spurred,  to  find  the  motor  at  the  door,  a 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  165 

simple  lunch  being  packed  up,  and  gas-hel- 
mets got  ready!  "We  have  had  a  very  suc- 
cessful action  this  morning,"  said  Captain , 

evidently  in  the  best  of  spirits.  "We  have  tak- 
en back  some  trenches  on  the  Ypres-Comines 
Canal  that  we  lost  a  little  while  ago,  and  cap- 
tured about  200  prisoners.  If  we  go  off  at 
once,  we  shall  be  in  time  to  see  the  German 
counter-attack." 

It  was  again  fine,  though  not  bright,  and  the 
distances  far  less  clear.  This  time  we  struck 
northeast,  passing  first  the  sacred  region  of 
G.  H.  Q.  itself,  where  we  showed  our  passes. 
Then  after  making  our  way  through  roads  lined 
interminably,  as  on  the  previous  day,  with  the 
splendid  motor-lorries  laden  with  food  and 
ammunition,  which  have  made  such  a  new 
thing  of  the  transport  of  this  war,  interspersed 
with  rows  of  ambulances  and  limbered  wagons, 
with  flying-stations  and  horse  lines,  we  climbed 
a  hill  to  one  of  the  finest  positions  in  this  north- 
ern land ;  an  old  town,  where  Gaul  and  Roman, 
Frank  and  Fleming,  English  and  French  have 


166  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

clashed,  which  looks  out  northward  towards  the 
Yser  and  Dunkirk,  and  east  towards  Ypres. 
Now,  if  the  mists  will  only  clear,  we  shall  see 
Ypres!  But,  alas,  they  lie  heavy  over  the 
plain,  and  we  descend  the  hill  again  without 
that  vision.  Now  we  are  bound  for  Pope- 
ringhe,  and  must  go  warily,  because  there  is  a 
lively  artillery  action  going  on  beyond  Pope- 
ringhe,  and  it  is  necessary  to  find  out  what 
roads  are  being  shelled. 

On  the  way  we  stop  at  an  air-station,  to 
watch  the  aeroplanes  rising  and  coming  down, 
and  at  a  point  near  Poperinghe  we  go  over  a 
casualty-clearing  station — a  collection  of  hos- 
pital huts,  with  storehouses  and  staff  quarters 
— with  the  medical  officer  in  charge.  Here 
were  women  nurses  who  are  not  allowed  in  the 
field  dressing-stations  nearer  the  line.  There 
were  not  many  wounded,  though  they  were 
coming  in,  and  the  Doctor  was  not  for  the 
moment  very  busy. 

We  stood  on  the  threshold  of  a  large  ward, 
where  we  could  not,  I  think,  be  seen.    At  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  167 

farther  end  a  serious  case  was  being  attended 
by  nurses  and  surgeons.  Everything  was  pass- 
ing in  silence;  and  to  me  it  was  as  if  there 
came  from  the  distant  group  a  tragic  message 
of  suffering,  possibly  death.  Then,  as  we 
passed  lingeringly  away,  we  saw  three  young 
officers,  all  wounded,  running  up  from  the  am- 
bulance at  the  gate,  which  had  just  brought 
them,  and  disappearing  into  one  of  the  wards. 
The  first — a  splendid  kilted  figure — had  his 
head  bound  up;  the  others  were  apparently 
wounded  in  the  arm.  But  they  seemed  to  walk 
on  air,  and  to  be  quite  unconscious  that  any- 
thing was  wrong  with  them.  It  had  been  a 
success,  a  great  success,  and  they  had  been  in  it ! 
The  ambulances  were  now  arriving  fast  from 
the  field  dressing-stations  close  to  the  line, 
and  we  hurried  away,  and  were  soon  driving 
through  Poperinghe.  Here  and  there  there 
was  a  house  wrecked  with  shell-fii'c.  The 
little  town  indeed  with  its  picturesque  place  is 
constantly  shelled.  But,  all  the  same,  life  seems 
to  go  on  as  usual.     The  Poperinghe  boy,  like 


168  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

his  London  brother,  hangs  on  the  back  of  carts ; 
his  father  and  mother  come  to  their  door  to 
watch  what  is  going  on,  or  to  ask  eagerly  for 
news  of  the  counter-attack ;  and  his  little  broth- 
ers and  sisters  go  tripping  to  school,  in  short 
cloaks  with  the  hoods  drawn  over  their  heads, 
as  though  no  war  existed.  Here  and  in  the 
country  round,  poor  robbed  Belgium  is  still 
at  home  on  her  own  soil,  and  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  the  English  Army,  by  which,  in- 
deed, this  remnant  of  her  prospers  greatly.  As 
I  have  already  insisted,  the  relations  every- 
where between  the  British  soldier  and  the 
French  and  Belgian  populations  are  among 
the  British — or  shall  I  say  the  Allied? — tri- 
umphs of  the  war. 

Farther  on  the  road  a  company  from  a  fa- 
mous regiment,  picked  men  all  of  them,  comes 
swinging  along,  fresh  from  their  baths! — life 
and  force  in  every  movement — young  Harrys 
with  their  beavers  on.  Then,  a  house  where 
men  have  their  gas-helmets  tested — a  very 
strict   and   necessary   business;   and   another. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  169 

where  an  ex-Balliol  tutor  and  Army  Chaplain 
keeps  open  doors  for  the  soldier  in  his  hours  of 
rest  or  amusement.  But  we  go  in  search  of  a 
safe  road  to  a  neighbouring  village,  where  some 
fresh  passes  have  to  be  got.  Each  foot  now  of 
the  way  is  crowded  with  the  incidents  and  ap- 
purtenances of  war,  and  war  close  at  hand. 
An  Australian  transport  base  is  pointed  out, 
with  a  wholly  Australian  staff.  "Some  of  the 
men,"  says  our  guide,  "are  millionaires."  Close 
by  is  an  aeroplane  descending  unexpectedly  in 
a  field,  and  a  crowd  of  men  rushing  to  help; 
and  we  turn  away  relieved  to  see  the  two 
aviators  walking  off  unhurt.  Meanwhile,  I 
notice  a  regular  game  of  football  going  on  at 
a  distance,  and  some  carefully  written  names 
of  bypaths— "Hyde  Park  Corner,"  "Picca- 
dilly," "Queen  Mary's  Road,"  and  the  like. 
The  animation,  the  life  of  the  scene  are  inde- 
scribable. 

At  the  next  village  the  road  was  crowded 
both  with  natives  and  soldiers  to  see  the  Ger- 
man prisoners  brought  in.    Alack!  we  did  not 


170  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

see  them.  Ambulances  were  passing  and  re- 
passing, the  slightly  wounded  men  in  cars  open 
at  the  back,  the  more  serious  cases  in  closed 
cars,  and  everywhere  the  same  va  et  vient  of 
lorries  and  wagons,  of  staff-cars  and  motor- 
cyclists. It  was  not  right  for  us  to  add  to  the 
congestion  in  the  road.  Moreover,  the  hours 
were  drawing  on,  and  the  great  sight  was  still 
to  come.  But  to  have  watched  those  prisoners 
come  in  would  have  somehow  rounded  off  the 
day! 

IV 

Our  new  passes  took  us  to  the  top  of  a  hill 
well  known  to  the  few  onlookers  of  which  this 
war  admits.  The  motor  stopped  at  a  point 
on  the  road  where  a  picket  was  stationed,  who 
examined  our  papers.  Then  came  a  stiff  and 
muddy  climb,  past  a  dugout  for  protection  in 

case  of  shelling,  Captain  carrying  the 

three  gas-helmets.  At  the  top  was  a  flat  green 
space — three  or  four  soldiers  playing  football 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  171 

on  it! — and  an  old  windmill,  and  farm-build- 
ings. 

We  sheltered  behind  the  great  beams  sup- 
porting the  windmill,  and  looked  out  through 
them,  north  and  east,  over  a  wide  landscape ;  a 
plain  bordered  eastward  by  low  hills,  every  mile 
of  it,  almost,  watered  by  British  blood,  and 
consecrate  to  British  dead.  As  we  reached  the 
windmill,  as  though  in  sombre  greeting,  the 
floating  mists  on  the  near  horizon  seemed  to 
part,  and  there  rose  from  them  a  dark,  jagged 
tower,  one  side  of  it  torn  away.  It  was  the 
tower  of  Ypres — ^mute  victim! — ^mute  witness 
to  a  crime,  that,  beyond  the  reparations  of  our 
own  day,  history  will  avenge  through  years  to 
come. 

A  flash! — another! — from  what  appear  to 
be  the  ruins  at  its  base.  It  is  the  English  guns 
speaking  from  the  lines  between  us  and  Ypres ; 
and  as  we  watch  we  see  the  columns  of  white 
smoke  rising  from  the  German  lines  as  the 
shells  burst.  There  they  are,  the  German  lines 
— along  the  Messines  ridge.    We  make  them 


172  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

out  quite  clearly,  thanks  to  a  glass  and  Captain 

's  guidance.    Their  guns,  too,  are  at  work, 

and  a  couple  of  their  shells  are  bursting  on  our 
trenches  somewhere  between  Vlamertinghe  and 
Dickebusche.  Then  the  rattle  of  our  machine- 
guns — as  it  seems  from  somewhere  close  below 
us,  and  again  the  boom  of  the  artillery. 

The  counter-action  is  in  progress,  and  we 
watch  what  can  be  seen  or  guessed  of  it,  in 
fascination.  We  are  too  far  off  to  see  what 
is  actually  happening  between  the  opposing 
trenches,  but  one  of  the  chief  fields  of  past  and 
present  battle,  scenes  which  our  children  and 
our  children's  children  will  go  to  visit,  lie 
spread  out  before  us.  Half  the  famous  sites 
of  the  earlier  war  can  be  dimly  made  out  be- 
tween us  and  Ypres.  In  front  of  us  is  the 
gleam  of  the  Zillebeke  Lake,  beyond  it  Hooge. 
Hill  60  is  in  that  band  of  shadow;  a  little  far- 
ther east  the  point  where  the  Prussian  Guard 
was  mown  down  at  the  close  of  the  first  Battle 
of  Ypres;  farther  south  the  fields  and  woods 
made  for  ever  famous  by  the  charge  of  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  173 

Household  Cavalry,  by  the  deeds  of  the  Wor- 
cesters,  and  the  London  Scottish,  by  all  the 
splendid  valour  of  that  "thin  red  line,"  French 
and  English,  cavalry  and  infantry,  which  in  the 
first  Battle  of  Ypres  withstood  an  enemy  four 
times  as  strong,  saved  France,  and  thereby 
England,  and  thereby  Europe.  In  that  tract 
of  ground  over  which  we  are  looking  lie  more 
than  100,000  graves,  English  and  French;  and 
to  it  the  hearts  of  two  great  nations  will  turn 
for  all  time.  Then  if  you  try  to  pierce  the 
northern  haze,  beyond  that  ruined  tower,  you 
may  follow  in  imagination  the  course  of  the 
Yser  westward  to  that  Belgian  coast  where 
Admiral  Hood's  guns  broke  down  and  scat- 
tered the  German  march  upon  Dunkirk  and 
Calais;  or  if  you  turn  south  you  are  looking 
over  the  Belfry  of  Bailleul,  towards  Neuve 
Chapelle,  and  Festubert,  and  all  the  fierce 
fighting-ground  round  Souchez  and  the  Laby- 
rinth. Once  English  and  French  stood  linked 
here  in  a  common  heroic  defence.  Now  the 
English  hold  all  this  line  firmly  from  the  sea 


174  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

to  the  Somme ;  while  the  French,  with  the  eyes 
of  the  world  upon  them,  are  making  history, 
hour  by  hour,  at  Verdun. 

So  to  this  point  we  have  followed  one  brancH 
— the  greatest — of  England's  effort;  and  the 
mind,  when  eyes  fail,  pursues  it  afresh  from 
its  beginnings  when  we  first  stood  to  arms  in 
August,  1914,  through  what  Mr.  Buchan  has 
finely  called  the  "rally  of  the  Empire,"  through 
the  early  rush  and  the  rapid  growth  of  the  new 
armies,  through  the  strengthening  of  Egypt, 
the  disaster  of  Gallipoli,  the  seizure  of  the  Ger- 
man Colonies;  through  all  that  vast  upheaval 
at  home  which  we  have  seen  in  the  munition 
areas;  through  that  steady,  and  ever-growing 
organisation  on  the  friendly  French  soil  we 
have  watched  in  the  supply  bases.  Yet  here, 
for  us,  it  culminates ;  and  here  and  in  the  North 
Sea,  we  can  hardly  doubt — whatever  may  be 
the  diversions  in  other  fields — will  be  fought, 
for  Great  Britain,  the  decisive  battles  of  the 
war.  As  I  turn  to  those  dim  lines  on  the  Mes- 
sines  ridge,  I  have  come  at  last  to  sight  of 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  175 

whither  it  all  moves.  There,  in  those  trenches  is 
The  Aggressor — the  enemy  who  has  wantonly 
broken  the  peace  of  Europe,  who  has  befouled 
civilisation  with  deeds  of  lust  and  blood,  be- 
tween whom  and  the  Allies  there  can  be  no 
peace  till  the  Allies'  right  arm  dictates  it. 
Every  week,  every  day,  the  British  Armies 
grow,  the  British  troops  pour  steadily  across 
the  Channel,  and  to  the  effort  of  England  and 
her  Allies  there  will  be  no  truce  till  the  right- 
eous end  is  won. 

But  the  shadows  are  coming  down  on  the 
great  scene,  and  with  the  sound  of  the  guns  still 
in  our  ears  we  speed  back  through  the  crowded 
roads  to  G.  H.  Q.,  and  these  wonderful  days 
are  over.  Now,  all  that  remains  for  me  is  to 
take  you,  far  away  from  the  armies,  into  the 
English  homes  whence  the  men  fighting  here 
are  drawn,  and  to  show  you,  if  I  can,  very 
shortly,  by  a  few  instances,  what  rich  and  poor 
are  doing  as  individuals  to  feed  the  effort  of 
England  in  this  war.  What  of  the  young ^  of  all 
classes  and  opportunities,  who  have  laid  down 


176  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

their  lives  in  this  war?  What  of  the  mothers 
[who  reared  them,  the  schools  and  universities 
which  sent  them  forth? — the  comrades  who  are 
making  ready  to  carry  on  their  work?  You 
ask  me  as  to  the  spirit  of  the  nation — ^the  foun- 
dation of  all  else.  Let  us  look  into  a  few  lives, 
a  few  typical  lives  and  families,  and  see. 


VI 

April  22nd. 

Dear  H. 

As  I  begin  upon  this  final  letter  to  you  comes 
the  news  that  the  threatened  split  in  the  Brit- 
ish Cabinet  owing  to  the  proposed  introduction 
of  general  military  service  has  been  averted, 
and  that  at  a  Secret  Session  to  be  held  next 
Tuesday,  April  25th,  Ministers  will,  for  the 
first  time,  lay  before  both  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment full  and  complete  information — much 
more  full  and  complete  at  any  rate,  than  has  yet 
been  given — of  the  "effort"  of  Great  Britain 
in  this  world  war,  what  this  country  is  doing 
in  sea-power,  in  the  provision  of  Armies,  in  the 
lending  of  money  to  our  Allies,  in  our  own 
shipping  service  to  them,  and  in  our  supply  to 
them  of  munitions,  coal,  and  other  war  material 
— including  boots  and  clothing.  If,  then,  our 
own  British  Parliament  will  be  for  the  first 
time  fully  apprised  next  Tuesday  of  what  the 

177 


178  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

nation  has  been  doing,  it  is,  perhaps,  small 
wonder  that  you  on  your  side  of  the  Atlantic 
have  not  rightly  understood  the  performance 
of  a  nation  which  has,  collectively,  the  same 
love  of  "grousing"  as  the  individual  British 
soldier  shows  in  the  trenches. 

Let  me,  however,  go  back  and  recapitulate 
a  little. 

In  the  first  of  these  letters,  I  tried,  by  a 
rapid  "vision"  of  the  Fleet,  as  I  personally 
saw  an  important  section  of  it  amid  the  snows 
of  February,  to  point  to  the  indispensable  con- 
dition of  this  "effort,"  without  which  it  could 
never  have  been  made,  without  which  it  could 
not  be  maintained  for  a  day,  at  the  present 
moment.  Since  that  visit  of  mine,  the  power 
of  the  Fleet  and  the  effect  of  the  Fleet  have 
strengthened  week  by  week.  The  blockade  of 
Germany  is  far  more  effective  than  it  was  three 
months  ago;  the  evidence  of  its  growing  strin- 
gency accumulates  steadily,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  British  Foreign  Office  has  been  anx- 
iously trying,  and  evidently  with  much  success. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  179 

to  minimise  for  neutrals  its  inevitable  difficul- 
ties and  inconveniences.  Meanwhile,  as  Mr. 
Asquith  will  explain  next  Tuesday,  the  expen- 
diture on  the  war,  not  only  on  our  own  needs 
but  on  those  of  our  Allies  is  colossal — terrify- 
ing. The  most  astonishing  Budget  of  English 
History,  demanding  a  fourth  of  his  income 
from  every  well-to-do  citizen,  has  been  brought 
in  since  I  began  to  write  these  letters,  and 
quietly  accepted.  Five  hundred  millions  ster- 
ling ($2,500,000,000)  have  been  already  lent  to 
our  Allies.  We  are  spending  at  the  yearly  rate 
of  600,000,000  sterling  ($3,000,000,000)  on  the 
Army;  200,000,000  on  the  Navy  as  compared 
with  40,000,000  in  1913;  while  the  Munitions 
Department  is  costing  about  two-thirds  as 
much  (400,000,000  sterling)  as  the  rest  of  the 
Army,  and  is  employing  close  upon  2,000,000 
workers,  one-tenth  of  them  women.  The  ex- 
port trade  of  the  country,  in  spite  of  sub- 
marines and  lack  of  tonnage,  is  at  the  moment 
greater  than  it  was  in  the  corresponding 
months  of  1913. 


180  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

As  to  what  we  have  got  for  our  money, 
Parliament  has  authorised  an  Army  of  4,000,- 
000  men,  and  it  is  on  the  question  of  the  last 
half  million  that  England's  Effort  now  turns. 
Mr.  Asquith  will  explain  everything  that  has 
been  done,  and  everything  that  still  remains  to 
do,  in  camera  to  Parliament  next  Tuesday. 
But  do  not,  my  dear  friend,  make  any  mis- 
take !  England  will  get  the  men  she  wants;  and 
Labour  will  be  in  the  end  just  as  determined  to 
get  them  as  any  other  section  of  the  Commu- 
nity. Meanwhile,  abroad,  while  we  seem,  for 
the  moment,  in  France  to  be  inactive,  we  are  in 
reality  giving  the  French  at  Verdun  just  that 
support  which  they  and  General  Joifre  desire, 
and — it  can  scarcely  be  doubted — preparing 
great  things  on  our  own  account.  In  spite  of 
our  failure  in  Gallipoli,  and  the  anxious  posi- 
tion of  General  Townshend's  force,  Egypt  is  no 
longer  in  danger  of  attack,  if  it  ever  has  been ; 
our  sea-power  has  brought  a  Russian  force 
safely  to  Marseilles;  and  the  possibilities  of 
British  and  Russian  Collaboration  in  the  East 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  181 

are  rapidly  opening  out.  As  to  the  great  and 
complex  war-machine  we  have  been  steadily; 
building  up  on  French  soil,  as  I  tried  to  show; 
in  my  fourth  letter,  whether  in  the  supply; 
bases,  or  in  the  war  organisation  along  the 
ninety  miles  of  front  now  held  by  the  British 
Armies,  it  would  indeed  astonish  those  dead 
heroes  of  the  Retreat  from  Mons — could  they 
comes  back  to  see  it!  We  are  not  satisfied 
with  it  yet — hence  the  unrest  in  Parliament 
and  the  Press — we  shall  never  be  satisfied — : 
till  Germany  has  accepted  the  terms  of  the 
Allies.  But  those  who  know  England  best 
have  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  the  temper  of 
the  nation  which  has  so  far  "improvised  the  im- 
possible," in  the  setting  up  of  this  machine,  and 
means,  in  the  end,  to  get  out  of  it  what  it  wants. 
The  temper  of  the  nation  ?  In  this  last  let- 
ter let  me  take  some  samples  of  it.  First — = 
what  have  the  rich  been  doing?  As  to  money, 
the  figures  of  the  income-tax,  the  death-duties, 
and  the  various  war  loans  are  there  to  show; 
what  they  have  contributed  to  the  State.    The 


182  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Joint  War  Committee  of  the  Red  Cross  and 
the  St.  John's  Ambulance  Association  have  col- 
lected— though  not,  of  course,  from  the  rich 
only — close  on  4,000,000  sterling  (between 
$18,000,000  and  $19,000,000),  and  the  Prince 
of  Wales  Fund  nearly  6,000,000  ( $30,000,000 ) . 
The  lavishness  of  English  giving,  indeed,  in 
all  directions  during  the  last  two  years,  could 
hardly  I  think  have  been  outdone.  A  few 
weeks  ago  I  walked  with  the  Duke  of  Bed- 
ford through  the  training  and  reinforcement 
camp,  about  fifteen  miles  from  my  o\vn  home 
in  the  country,  which  he  himself  commands  and 
which,  at  the  outbreak  of  war,  he  himself  built 
without  waiting  for  public  money  or  War 
Office  contractors,  to  house  and  train  recruits 
for  the  various  Bedfordshire  regiments.  The 
camp  holds  1,200  men,  and  is  ranged  in  a  park 
where  the  oaks — still  standing — were  consid- 
ered too  old  by  Oliver  Cromwell's  Commission- 
ers to  furnish  timber  for  the  English  Navy. 
Besides  ample  barrack  accommodation  in  com- 
fortable huts,  planned  so  as  to  satisfy  every 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  183 

demand  whether  of  health  or  convenience,  all 
the  opportunities  that  Aldershot  offers,  on  a 
large  scale,  are  here  provided  in  miniature. 
The  model  trenches  with  the  latest  improve- 
ments in  plan,  revetting,  gun-emplacements, 
sally-ports,  and  the  rest,  spread  through  the 
sandy  soil ;  the  musketry  ranges,  bombing  and 
bayonet  schools  are  of  the  most  recent  and 
efficient  type.  And  the  Duke  takes  a  keen 
personal  interest  in  every  man  in  training,  fol- 
lows his  progress  in  camp,  sees  him  off  to  the 
front,  and  very  often  receives  him,  when 
wounded,  in  the  perfectly  equipped  hospital 
which  the  Duchess  has  established  in  Woburn 
Abbey  itself.  Here  the  old  riding-school,  ten- 
nis-court, and  museum,  which  form  a  large 
building  fronting  the  abbey,  have  been  turned 
into  wards  as  attractive  as  bright  and  simple 
colour,  space,  flowers,  and  exquisite  cleanliness 
can  make  them.  The  Duchess  is  herself  the 
Matron  in  charge,  under  the  War  Office,  keeps 
all  the  records,  is  up  at  half  past  five  in  the 
morning,  and  spends  her  day  in  the  endless 


184.  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

doing,  thinking,  and  contriving  that  such  a 
hospital  needs.  Not  very  far  away  stands  an- 
other beautiful  country  house,  rented  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Whitelaw  Reid  when  they  were  in 
England.  It  also  is  a  hospital,  but  its  owner, 
Lord  Lucas,  not  a  rich  man,  has  now  given  it 
irrevocably  to  the  nation  for  the  use  of  dis- 
abled soldiers,  together  with  as  much  land  as 
may  suffice  a  farm  colony  chosen  from  among 
them.  The  beautiful  hospital  of  250  beds  at 
Paignton,  in  North  Devon,  run  entirely  by 
women  of  American  birth  now  resident  in 
Great  Britain,  without  any  financial  aid  from 
the  British  Government,  was  another  large 
country  house  given  to  the  service  of  the 
wounded  by  Mr.  Singer.  Lady  Sheffield's  hos- 
pital for  25  beds  at  Alderley  Park  is  an  exam- 
ple of  how  part  of  a  country  house  with  all  its 
green  and  restful  surroundings  may  be  used 
for  those  who  have  suffered  in  the  war,  and  it 
has  many  fellows  in  all  parts  of  England.  Al- 
together about  700  country  houses,  large  and 
small,  have  been  offered  to  the  War  Office. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  185 

But  money  and  houses  are  the  very  least 
part  of  what  the  old  families,  the  rich  manu- 
facturers, or  the  educated  class  generally  have 
oifered  to  their  country  in  this  war.  Democ- 
racy has  gone  far  with  us,  but  it  may  still  be 
said  that  the  young  heir  to  a  great  name,  to 
estates  with  which  his  family  has  been  con- 
nected for  generations,  and  to  the  accumulated 
"consideration"  to  use  a  French  word  in  a 
^French  sense,  which  such  a  position  almost 
always  carries  with  it — has  a  golden  time  in 
English  life.  Difficulties  that  check  others  fall 
away  from  him;  he  is  smiled  upon  for  his  kin- 
dred's sake  before  he  makes  friends  for  his  own ; 
the  world  is  overkind  to  his  virtues  and  blind 
to  his  faults;  he  enters  manhood  indeed  as 
"one  of  our  conquerors";  and  it  will  cost  him 
some  trouble  to  throw  away  his  advantages. 
Before  the  war  such  a  youth  was  the  common 
butt  of  the  Socialist  orator.  He  was  the  typi- 
cal "shirker"  and  "loafer,"  while  other  men 
worked;  the  parasite  bred  from  the  sweat  of 
the  poor ;  the  soft,  effeminate  creature  who  had 


186  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

never  faced  the  facts  of  life  and  never  would. 
As  to  his  soldiering — ^the  common  profession  of 
so  many  of  his  kind — that  was  only  another 
offence  in  the  eyes  of  politicians  like  Mr.  Keir 
Hardie.  When  the  class  war  came,  he  would 
naturally  be  found  shooting  down  the  work- 
men ;  but  for  any  other  war,  an  ignorant  popin- 
jay!— incompetent  even  at  his  own  trade,  and 
no  match  whatever  for  the  scientific  soldier  of 
the  Continent. 

Those  who  knew  anything  of  the  Army  were 
well  aware  long  before  1914  that  this  type  of 
officer — if  he  still  existed,  as  no  doubt  he  had 
once  existed — had  become  extraordinarily  rare ; 
that  since  the  Boer  War,  the  level  of  education 
in  the  Army,  the  standard  of  work  demanded, 
the  quality  of  the  relations  between  officers 
and  men  had  all  steadily  advanced.  And  with 
regard  to  the  young  men  of  the  "classes"  in 
general,  those  who  had  to  do  with  them,  at 
school  and  college,  while  fully  alive  to  their 
weaknesses,  yet  cherished  convictions  which 
were  more  instinct  than  anything  else,  as  to 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  187 

what  stuff  these  easy-going,  sport-loving  fel- 
lows might  prove  to  be  made  of  in  case  of 
emergency. 

Well,  the  emergency  came.  These  youths  of 
the  classes,  heirs  to  titles  and  estates,  or  just 
younger  sons  of  the  old  squirearchy  of  Eng- 
land, so  far  as  it  still  survives,  went  out  in  their 
hundreds,  with  the  old  and  famous  regiments 
of  the  British  line  in  the  Expeditionary  Force, 
and  perished  in  their  hundreds.  Forty-seven 
eldest  sons,  heirs  to  English  peerages  had  fallen 
within  a  year  of  the  outbreak  of  war — among 
them  the  heirs  to  such  famous  houses  as  Long- 
leat,  Pet  worth,  and  Castle  Ashby — and  the 
names  of  Grenfell,  Hood,  Stuart,  Bruce,  Lis- 
ter, Douglas  Pennant,  Worsley,  Hay,  St. 
Aubyn,  Carington,  Annesley,  Hicks  Beach — 
together  with  men  whose  fathers  have  played 
prominent  parts  in  the  politics  or  finance  of  the 
last  half  century.  And  the  first  ranks  have 
been  followed  by  what  one  might  almost  call  a 
levee  en  masse  of  those  that  remained.  Their 
blood  has  been  spilt  like  water  at  Ypres  and 


188  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

La  Bassee,  at  Suvla  and  Helles.  Whatever 
may  be  said  henceforward  of  these  "golden 
lads"  of  ours,  "shirker"  and  "loafer"  they  can 
never  be  called  again.  They  have  died  too 
lavishly,  their  men  have  loved  and  trusted  them 
too  well  for  that — and  some  of  the  working- 
class  leaders,  with  the  natural  generosity  of 
English  hearts,  have  confessed  it  abundantly. 
And  the  professional  classes — the  intellec- 
tuals— everywhere  the  leading  force  of  the  na- 
tion— have  done  just  as  finely,  and  of  course 
in  far  greater  numbers.  Never  shall  I  forget 
my  visit  to  Oxford  last  May — in  the  height  of 
the  summer  term,  just  at  that  moment  when 
Oxford  normally  is  at  its  loveliest  and  fullest, 
brimming  over  with  young  life,  the  streets 
crowded  with  caps  and  gowns,  the  river  and 
towing-path  alive  with  the  "flannelled  fools," 
who  have  indeed  flung  back  Rudyard  Kipling's 
gibe — if  it  ever  applied  to  them — with  interest. 
For  they  had  all  disappeared.  They  were  in 
the  trenches,  landing  at  Suvla,  garrisoning 
Egypt,  pushing  up  to  Baghdad.    The  colleges 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  189 

contained  a  few  forlorn  remnants — under  age, 
or  medically  unfit.  The  river,  on  a  glorious 
May  day,  showed  boats  indeed,  but  girls  were 
rowing  them.  Oriel,  the  college  of  Arnold,  of 
Newman,  of  Cecil  Rhodes,  was  filled  with 
women  students,  whose  own  college,  Somer- 
ville,  had  become  a  hospital.  The  Examination 
Schools  in  the  High  Street  were  a  hospital, 
and  the  smell  of  disinfectants  displaced  the 
fragrance  of  lilac  and  hawthorn  for  ever  asso- 
ciated in  the  minds  of  Oxford's  lovers  with  the 
summer  term.  In  New  College  gardens,  there 
were  white  tents  full  of  wounded.  I  walked 
up  and  down  that  wide,  deserted  lawn  of  St. 
John's,  where  Charles  I  once  gathered  his  Cav- 
aliers, with  an  old  friend,  an  Oxford  tutor  of 
forty  years'  standing,  who  said  with  a  despair- 
ing gesture,  speaking  of  his  pupils :  "So  many 
are  gone — so  many! — and  the  terrible  thing  is 
that  I  can't  feel  it  as  I  once  did — as  blow  fol- 
lows blow  one  seems  to  have  lost  the  power." 

Let  me  evoke  the  memory  of  some  of  them. 
From   Balliol   have   gone   the   two    Grenfell 


190  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

brothers,  vehement,  powerful  souls,  by  the  tes- 
timony of  those  who  knew  them  best,  not  de- 
lightful to  those  who  did  not  love  them,  not 
just,  often,  to  those  they  did  not  love,  but  full 
of  that  rich  stuff  which  life  matures  to  all  fine 
uses.  The  younger  fell  in  the  attack  on  Hooge, 
July  31st,  last  year;  the  elder,  Julian,  had 
fallen  some  months  earlier.  Julian's  verses, 
composed  the  night  before  he  was  wounded, 
will  be  remembered  with  Rupert  Brooke's  son- 
nets, as  expressing  the  inmost  passion  of  the 
war  in  great  hearts.  They  were  written  in  the 
spring  weather  of  April,  1915,  and  a  month 
later  the  writer  had  died  of  his  wounds.  With 
an  exquisite  felicity  and  strength  the  lines  run, 
expressing  the  strange  and  tragic  joy  of  the 
"fighting  man"  in  the  spring,  which  may  be 
his  last — in  the  night  heavens — in  the  wood- 
land trees : 

"The  woodland  trees  that  stand  together 
They  stand  to  him  each  one  a  friend ; 
They  gently  speak  in  the  windy  weather; 
They  guide  to  valley  and  ridge's  end. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  191 

*'The  kestrel  hovering  by  day 

And  the  little  owls  that  call  by  night, 
Bid  him  be  swift  and  keen  as  they 
As  keen  of  ear,  as  swift  of  sight. 

"The  blackbird  sings  to  him,  'Brother,  brother. 
If  this  be  the  last  song  you  shall  sing. 
Sing  well,  for  you  may  not  sing  another 
Brother,  sing.' 

"In  dreary,  doubtful  waiting  hours. 
Before  the  brazen  frenzy  starts. 
The  horses  show  him  nobler  powers ; — 
O  patient  eyes,  courageous  hearts ! 

"And  when  the  burning  moment  breaks, 
And  all  things  else  are  out  of  mind 
And  only  Joy  of  Battle  takes 

Him  by  the  throat  and  makes  him  blind 

"Through  joy  and  blindness  he  shall  know 
Not  caring  much  to  know,  that  still 
Nor  lead  nor  steel  shall  reach  him,  so 
That  it  be  not  the  Destined  Will. 

"The  thundering  line  of  battle  stands, 

And  in  the  air  Death  moans  and  sings; 
But  Day  shall  clasp  him  with  strong  hands. 
And  Night  shall  fold  him  in  soft  wings." 

A  young  man  of  another  type,  inheriting 
from  the  Cecils  on  the  one  side,  and  from  his 


192  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

grandfather,  the  first  Lord  Selborne,  on  the 
other,  the  best  traditions  of  English  Conser- 
vatism and  English  churchmanship  —  open- 
eyed,  patriotic,  devout — ^has  been  lost  to  the 
nation  in  Robert  A.  S.  Palmer,  the  second  son 
of  Lord  and  Lady  Selborne,  affectionately 
known  to  an  ardent  circle  of  friends  whose 
hopes  were  set  on  him,  as  "Bobbie  Palmer." 
He  has  fallen  in  the  Mesopotamian  campaign; 
and  of  him,  as  of  William  Henry  Gladstone, 
the  grandson  and  heir  of  England's  great 
Liberal  Minister,  who  fell  in  Flanders  a  year 
ago,  it  may  be  said,  as  his  Oxford  contempora- 
ries said  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 

Honour  and  Fame  are  got  about  their  graves. 
And  there  sit  mourning  of  each  other's  loss. 

In  one  of  his  latest  letters,  quoted  by  a  friend 
in  a  short  biography,  Robert  Palmer  wrote : — 
"Who  isn't  weary  to  death  of  the  war?  I  cer- 
tainly have  been,  for  over  a  year;  yes,  and 
sorrowful  almost  unto  death  over  it,  at  times, 
as  you  doubtless  have  too.    But  of  one  thing  I 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  193 

am  and  always  have  been  sure,  that  it  is  wortK 
the  cost  and  any  cost  there  is  to  come,  to  pre- 
vent Prussianism — which  is  Anti- Christ — con- 
trolling Europe."  The  following  eloquent 
passage  written  by  an  Oxford  Fellow  and 
Tutor,  in  a  series  of  short  papers  on  the  losses 
sustained  by  Oxford  in  the  war,  is  understood 
to  refer  to  Mr.  Palmer : — 

"To-night  the  bell  tolls  in  the  brain  (haud 
rediturus)  over  one  of  the  noblest — if  it  be  not 
a  treason  to  discriminate — of  all  the  dead  one 
has  known  who  have  died  for  England.  Gra- 
ciousness  was  in  all  his  doings  and  in  all  the 
workings  of  his  mind.  The  music  and  gym- 
nastic whereof  Plato  wrote,  that  should  attune 
the  body  to  harmony  with  the  mind,  and  har- 
monise all  the  elements  of  the  mind  in  a  perfect 
unison,  had  done  their  work  upon  him.  He 
seemed — at  any  rate,  to  the  eyes  of  those  who 
loved  him,  and  they  were  many — to  have  the 
perfection  of  nature's  endowment:  beauty  of 
mind  knit  to  beauty  of  body,  and  all  informed 
by   a   living   spirit   of  affection,   so   that   his 


194  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

presence  was  a  benediction,  and  a  matter  for 
thanksgiving  that  God  had  made  men  after 
this  manner.  So  to  speak  of  him  is  perhaps 
to  idealise  him;  but  one  can  only  idealise  that 
which  suggests  the  ideal,  and  at  the  least  he 
had  a  more  perfect  participation  in  the  ideal 
than  falls  to  the  general  lot  of  humanity." 

Such  he  was :  and  now  he  too  is  dead.  From 
the  work  to  which  he  had  gone,  thousands  of 
miles  away  (a  work  of  service,  and  of  his  Mas- 
ter's service),  he  had  hastened  back  to  Eng- 
land, and  for  England  he  has  died.  His  tutor 
had  once  written  in  his  copy  of  the  Vulgate: 
"Esto  vir  fortis,  et  pugnemus  pro  populo 
nostro  et  pro  civitate  Dei  nostri."  He  was 
strong;  and  he  fought  for  both. 

Another  Oxford  man,  Gilbert  Talbot,  a 
youngest  son  of  the  much-loved  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  will  perhaps  stand  for  many,  in 
coming  years,  as  the  pre-eminent  type  of  first 
youth,  youth  with  all  its  treasure  of  life  and 
promise  unspent,  poured  out  like  spikenard  in 
this  war  at  the  feet  of  England.    Already  as- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  195 

sured  at  Oxford  of  a  brilliant  career  in  politics, 
a  fine  speaker,  a  hard  worker,  possessing  by  in- 
heritance the  charm  of  two  families,  always  in 
the  public  eye  and  ear,  and  no  less  popular 
than  famous,  he  had  just  landed  in  the  United 
States  when  the  war  broke  out.  He  was  going 
round  the  world  with  a  friend,  youth  and  am- 
bition high  within  him.  He  turned  back  with- 
out a  moment's  hesitation,  though  soldiering 
had  never  been  at  all  attractive  to  him,  and 
after  his  training  went  out  to  France.  He  was 
killed  in  Flanders  in  July  last.  Let  me  give 
the  story  of  his  identification  after  death  on 
the  battle-field,  by  his  elder  brother,  Neville, 
Army  Chaplain,  and  ex-Balliol  tutor,  as  Canon 
Scott  Holland  gav^e  it  in  the  Commonwealth: — • 
"The  attack  had  failed.  There  was  never 
any  hope  of  its  succeeding,  for  the  machine- 
guns  of  the  Germans  were  still  in  full  play, 
with  their  fire  unimpaired.  The  body  had  to 
lie  there  where  it  had  fallen.  Only,  his  brother 
could  not  endure  to  let  it  lie  unhonoured  or 
unblessed.    After  a  day  and  a  half  of  anxious 


196  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

searching  for  exact  details,  he  got  to  the  near- 
est trench  by  the  'murdered'  wood,  which  the 
shells  had  now  smashed  to  pieces.  There  he 
found  some  shattered  Somersets,  who  begged 
him  to  go  no  farther.  But  he  heard  a  voice 
within  him  bidding  him  risk  it,  and  the  call  of 
the  blood  drove  him  on.  Creeping  out  of  the 
far  end  of  the  trench,  as  dusk  fell,  he  crawled 
through  the  grass  on  hands  and  knees,  in  spite 
of  shells  and  snipers,  dropping  flat  on  the 
ground  as  the  flares  shot  up  from  the  German 
trenches.  And,  at  last,  thirty  yards  away  in 
the  open  ...  he  knew  that  he  was  close  on 
>vhat  he  sought.  Two  yards  farther,  he  found 
it.  He  could  stroke  with  his  hand  the  fair 
young  head  that  he  knew  so  well ;  he  could  feel 
for  pocket-book  and  prayer-book,  and  the 
badge  and  the  whistle.  He  could  breathe  a 
prayer  of  benediction  .  .  .  and  then  crawl 
back  on  his  perilous  way  in  the  night,  having 
done  all  that  man  could  do  for  the  brother 
whom  he  had  loved  so  fondly;  and  enabled, 
now,  to  tell  those  at  home  that  Gilbert  was 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  197 

dead  indeed,  but  that  he  had  died  the  death 
that  a  soldier  would  love  to  die,  leaving  his 
body  the  nearest  of  all  who  fell,  to  the  trencH 
that  he  had  been  told  to  take." 

Again,  of  Charles  Alfred  Lister,  Lord  Rib- 
blesdale's  eldest  son,  an  Oxford  friend  says: 
*'There  were  almost  infinite  possibilities  in  his 
future."  He  was  twice  wounded  at  the  Dar- 
danelles, was  then  offered  a  post  of  impor- 
tance in  the  Foreign  Office,  refused  it,  and 
went  back  to  the  front — ^to  die.  But  among 
the  hundreds  of  memorial  notices  issued  by 
the  Oxford  Colleges,  the  same  note  recurs  and 
recurs,  of  unhesitating,  uncalculated  sacrifice. 
Older  men,  and  younger  men,  Don,  and  under- 
graduate, lads  of  nineteen  and  twenty,  and 
those  who  were  already  school-mastering,  or 
practising  at  the  Bar,  or  in  business,  they  felt 
no  doubts,  they  made  no  delays.  Their  coun- 
try called,  and  none  failed  in  that  great  Adsum. 

Cambridge  of  course  has  the  same  story  to 
tell.  One  takes  the  short,  pathetic  biographies 
almost  at  random  from  the  ever-lengthening 


198  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

record,  contributed  by  the  colleges.  Captain 
J.  Lusk,  6th  Cameronians,  was  already  Direc- 
tor of  an  important  steel  works,  engaged  in 
Government  business  when  war  broke  out,  and 
might  have  honourably  claimed  exemption. 
Instead  he  offered  himself  at  once  on  mobilisa- 
tion, and  went  out  with  his  battalion  to  France 
last  spring.  On  the  15th  of  June,  at  Festu- 
bert,  he  was  killed  in  volunteering  to  bring 
what  was  left  of  a  frightfully  battered  battal- 
ion out  of  action.  "What  seems  to  me  my  duty 
as  an  officer,"  he  once  wrote  to  a  friend,  "is  to 
carry  my  sword  across  the  barriers  of  death 
clean  and  bright."  "This,"  says  the  friend  who 
writes  the  notice,  "he  has  done."  Lieutenant 
Le  Blanc  Smith,  of  Trinity,  machine-gun 
officer,  was  struck  in  the  forehead  by  a  sniper's 
bullet  while  reconnoitring.  His  General  and 
brother  officers  write: 

He  was  a  very  fine  young  officer.  .  .  .  Every  one  loved 
him.  .   .   .  His  men  would  do  anything  for  him.  .   .   . 

And  the  sergeant  of  his  machine-gun  bri- 
gade says: 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  199 

Although  only  a  non-commissioned  officer  myself,  I 
feel  I  have  lost  my  brother,  because  he  was  so  awfully 
good  and  kind  to  me  and  us  all. 

Lieutenant  Hamilton,  aged  twenty-five,  says 
in  a  last  letter  to  his  father : 

Just  a  line  while  the  beginning  of  the  great  battle  is 
going  on.  It  is  wonderful  how  peaceful  one  feels  amid 
it  all.  Any  moment  one  may  be  put  out  of  action,  but 
one  does  not  worry.  That  quiet  time  alone  with  God  at 
the  Holy  Communion  was  most  comforting. 

Immediately  after  writing  these  words,  the 
writer  fell  in  action.  Captain  Clarke,  a  famous 
Cambridge  athlete,  President  of  the  C.  U.  A. 
<C.,  bled  to  death — according  to  one  account — 
from  a  frightful  wound  received  in  the  advance 
near  Hooge  on  September  25th.  His  last  re- 
corded act — the  traditional  act  of  the  dying 
soldier ! — was  to  give  a  drink  from  his  flask  to 
a  wounded  private.  Of  the  general  action  of 
Cambridge  men,  the  Master  of  Christ's  writes : 
*'Nothing  has  been  more  splendid  than  the  way 
the  young  fellows  have  come  forward ;  not  only 
the  athletes  and  the  healthy,  but  in  all  cases 
the  most  unlikely  men  have  rushed  to  the  front. 


200  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  have  done  brilliantly.  The  mortality,  how- 
ever, has  been  appalling.  In  an  ordinary  way 
one  loses  one  killed  to  eight  or  nine  wounded; 
but  in  this  war  the  number  of  Cambridge  men 
killed  and  missing  practically  equals  the  num- 
ber of  wounded."  Of  the  effect  upon  the  Uni- 
versity an  eye-witness  says;  "Eighty  per  cent 
of  the  College  rooms  are  vacant.  Rows  and 
rows  of  houses  in  Cambridge  are  to  let.  All 
the  Junior  Fellows  are  on  service  in  one  capac- 
ity or  another,  and  a  great  many  of  the  Seniors 
are  working  in  Government  Offices  or  taking 
school  posts" — so  that  the  school  education  of 
the  Country  may  be  carried  on.  Altogether, 
nearly  12,000  Cambridge  men  are  serving;  980 
have  been  wounded;  780  have  been  killed;  92 
are  missing. 

As  to  one's  friends  and  kinsfolk,  let  me  re- 
call the  two  gallant  grandsons  of  my  dear  old 
friend  and  publisher,  George  Murray  Smith, 
the  original  publisher  of  Jane  Eyre,  friend  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  and  creator  of  the  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography.     The  elder  one. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  201 

:who  had  just  married  before  going  out,  fought 
all  through  the  retreat  from  Mons,  and  fell  in 
one  of  the  early  actions  on  the  Flanders  front. 
"He  led  us  all  the  way,"  said  one  of  his  men 
afterwards.  All  the  way! — All  through  the 
immortal  rear-guard  actions  of  August — only 
to  fall,  when  the  tide  had  turned,  and  the 
German  onslaught  on  Paris  had  been  finally 
broken !  "In  all  my  soldiering,"  writes  a  broth- 
er officer,  "I  have  never  seen  a  warmer  feeling 
between  men  and  their  officer."  "Was  he  not," 
asks  a  well-known  Eton  master,  "that  tall, 
smiling,  strong,  gentle-mannered  boy  at  White- 
Thomson's?" — possessing  an  "affectionate  re- 
gard and  feeling  for  others  which  boys  as  boys, 
especially  if  strong  and  popular,  don't  always, 
or  indeed  often  possess."  The  poor  parents 
were  uncertain  as  to  his  fate  for  many  weeks, 
but  he  finally  died  of  his  wounds  in  a  hospital 
behind  the  German  lines.  Then,  little  more 
than  six  months  later  came  the  second  blow. 
Geoffrey,  the  younger  brother,  aged  nineteen, 
fell  on  September  29th,  near  Vermelles.    Noth- 


202  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ing  could  be  more  touching  than  the  letters 
from  officers  and  men  about  this  brave,  sweet- 
tempered  boy.  "Poor  old  regiment !"  writes  the 
Colonel  to  the  lad's  father — "we  were  badly 
knocked  about,  and  I  brought  out  only  3 
officers  and  375  men,  but  they  did  magnifi- 
cently, and  it  was  thanks  to  officers  like  your 
son,  who  put  the  honour  of  the  regiment  before 
all  thought  of  fatigue  or  personal  danger. 
Such  a  gallant  lad!  We  all  loved  him."  A 
private,  the  boy's  soldier-servant,  who  fought 
with  him,  writes:  "I  wish  you  could  have  seen 
him  in  that  trench.  .  .  .  All  the  men  say  that 
he  deserved  the  V.  C.  .  .  .  I  don't  know  if 
we  are  going  back  to  those  trenches  any  more, 
but  if  we  do,  I  am  going  to  try  and  lay  Mr. 
Geoffrey  to  rest  in  some  quiet  place.  ...  I 
cannot  bear  to  think  that  I  shall  not  be  able 
to  be  with  him  any  more." 

But  how  they  crowd  upon  the  mind — the 
"unreturning  brave"!  Take  our  friends  and 
neighbours  in  this  quiet  Hertfordshire  coun- 
try.   All  round  us  the  blows  have  fallen — again 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  203 

and  again  the  only  son — sometimes  two  broth- 
ers out  of  three — the  most  brilliant — the  best 
beloved.  And  I  see  still  the  retreating  figure 
of  a  dear  nephew  of  my  own,  as  he  vanished 
under  the  trees  waving  his  hand  to  us  in  March 
last.  A  boy  made  of  England's  best — who 
after  two  years  in  Canada,  and  at  the  begin- 
ning of  what  must  have  been  a  remarkable 
career,  heard  the  call  of  the  Mother  Country, 
and  rushed  home  at  once.  He  was  transferred 
to  an  English  regiment,  and  came  to  say  good- 
bye to  us  in  March.  It  was  impossible  to  think 
of  Christopher's  coming  to  harm — such  life 
and  force,  such  wisdom  and  character  also,  in 
his  strong,  handsome  face  and  thoughtful  eyes ! 
We  talked  of  the  future  of  Canada — not  much 
of  the  war.  Then  he  vanished,  and  I  could 
not  feel  afraid.  But  one  night  in  May,  near 
Bailleul,  he  went  out  with  a  listening  party  be- 
tween the  trenches,  was  shot  through  both  legs 
by  a  sniper,  and  otherwise  injured — carried 
back  to  hospital,  and  after  a  few  hours'  vain 
hope,  sank  peacefully  into  eternity,  knowing 


204  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

only  that  he  had  done  his  duty  and  fearing 
nothing.  "Romance  and  melodrama,"  says 
Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  in  one  of  the  noblest 
and  most  moving  utterances  of  the  war,  "were 
once  a  memory — broken  fragments  living  on 
of  heroic  ages  in  the  past.  We  live  no  longer 
upon  fragments  and  memories,  we  have  en- 
tered ourselves  upon  an  heroic  age.  .  .  .  As 
for  me  personally,  there  is  one  thought  that  is 
always  with  me — ^the  thought  that  other  men 
are  dying  for  me,  better  men,  younger,  with 
more  hope  in  their  lives,  many  of  them  men 
whom  I  have  taught  and  loved."  The  ortho- 
dox Christian  "will  be  familiar  with  that 
thought  of  One  who  loved  you  dying  for  you. 
I  would  like  to  say  that  now  I  seem  to  be  fa- 
miliar with  the  thought  that  something  inno- 
cent, something  great,  something  that  loved 
me,  is  dying,  and  is  dying  daily  for  me.  That 
is  the  sort  of  community  we  now  are — a  com- 
munity in  which  one  man  dies  for  his  brother; 
and  underneath  all  our  hatreds,  our  little  anger 
and  quarrels,  we  are  brothers,  who  are  ready 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  205 

to  seal  our  brotherhood  with  blood.  It  is  for 
us  these  men  are  dying — for  the  women,  the 
old  men,  and  the  rejected  men — and  to  pre- 
serve civilisation  and  the  common  life  which 
we  are  keeping  alive,  or  building." 

So  much  for  the  richer  and  the  educated 
class.  As  to  the  rank  and  file,  the  Tommies 
who  are  fighting  and  dying  for  England  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  spirit  as  those  who  have  had 
ten  times  their  opportunities  in  this  unequal 
world,  I  have  seen  them  myself  within  a  mile 
of  the  trenches,  marching  quietly  up  through 
the  fall  of  the  March  evening  to  take  their 
places  in  that  line,  where,  every  night,  however 
slack  the  fighting,  a  minimum  of  so  many 
casualties  per  mile,  so  many  hideous  or  fatal 
injuries  by  bomb  or  shell  fire,  is  practically  in- 
variable. Not  the  conscript  soldiers  of  a  mili- 
tary nation,  to  whom  the  thought  of  fighting 
has  been  perforce  familiar  from  childhood! 
Men,  rather,  who  had  never  envisaged  fight- 
ing, to  whom  it  is  all  new,  who  at  bottom, 
however  firm  their  will,   or  wonderful  their 


206  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

courage,  hate  war,  and  think  it  a  loathsome 
business.  "I  do  not  find  it  easy,"  writes  a  chap- 
lain at  the  front  who  knows  his  men  and  has 
shared  all  the  dangers  of  their  life — "to  give 
incidents  and  sayings.  I  could  speak  of  the 
courage  of  the  wounded  brought  in  after  battle. 
How  many  times  has  one  heard  them  telling 
the  doctor  to  attend  to  others  before  them- 
selves! I  could  tell  you  of  a  very  shy  and 
nervous  boy  who,  after  an  attack,  dug,  himself 
alone,  with  his  intrenching  tool,  a  little  trench, 
under  continuous  fire,  up  which  trench  he  af- 
terwards crept  backwards  and  forwards  car- 
rying ammunition  to  an  advanced  post;  or  of 
another  who  sat  beside  a  wounded  comrade 
for  several  hours  under  snipers'  fire,  and  some- 
how built  him  a  slight  protection  until  night 
fell  and  rescue  came.  Such  incidents  are  mere- 
ly specimens  of  thousands  which  are  never 
known.  Indeed  it  is  the  heroism  of  all  the  men 
all  the  time  which  has  left  the  most  lasting 
impression  on  my  mind  after  thirteen  months 
at  the  war.     No  one  can  conceive  the  strain 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  207 

which  the  daily  routine  of  trench  life  entails, 
unless  one  has  been  among  the  men.  They 
never  show  the  slightest  sign  of  unwillingness, 
and  they  do  what  they  are  told  when  and 
where  they  are  told  without  questioning;  no 
matter  what  the  conditions  or  dangers,  they 
come  up  smiling  and  cheery  through  it  all — 
full  of  'grouse,'  perhaps,  but  that  is  the  sol- 
dier's privilege!  ...  It  is,  I  think,  what  we 
all  are  feeling  and  are  so  proud  of — this  un- 
breakable spirit  of  self-sacrifice  in  the  daily 
routine  of  trench  warfare.  We  are  proud  of 
it  because  it  is  the  highest  of  all  forms  of  self- 
sacrifice,  for  it  is  not  the  act  of  a  moment  when 
the  blood  is  up  or  the  excitement  of  battle  is 
at  fever  heat;  but  it  is  demanded  of  the  sol- 
dier, day  in  and  day  out,  and  shown  by  him 
coolly  and  deliberately,  day  in  and  day  out, 
with  death  always  at  hand.  We  are  proud  of 
it,  too,  because  it  is  so  surely  a  sign  of  the 
magnificent  'inoraV  of  our  troops — and  moral 
is  going  to  play  a  very  leading  part  as  the  war 
proceeds.  .  .  .     What  is  inspiring  this  splen- 


208  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

did  disregard  of  self  is  partly  the  certainty  that 
the  Cause  is  Right;  partly,  it  is  a  hidden  joy 
of  conscience  which  makes  them  know  that 
they  would  be  unhappy  if  they  were  not  doing 
their  bit — and  partly  (I  am  convinced  of  this, 
too, )  it  is  a  deepening  faith  in  the  Founder  of 
their  Faith  Whom  so  many  appreciate  and 
value  as  never  before,  because  they  realise 
that  even  He  has  not  shirked  that  very  mill  of 
suffering  through  which  they  are  now  passing 
themselves." 

A  few  days  ago,  I  accompanied  a  woman 
official  distributing  some  leaflets  on  behalf  of 
a  Government  department,  in  some  visits  to 
families  living  in  a  block  of  model  dwellings 
somewhere  in  South  London.  We  called  on 
nine  families.  In  every  single  case  the  man 
of  the  family  had  gone,  or  was  expecting  to 
go,  to  the  war;  except  in  one  case,  where  a 
man  who,  out  of  pure  patriotism  and  at  great 
personal  difficulty  had  joined  the  Volunteer 
Reserve  at  the  outbreak  of  war,  had  strained 
his  heart  in  trench-digging  and  was  now  medi- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  209 

cally  unfit,  to  his  own  bitter  disappointment. 
There  was  some  grumbling  in  the  case  of  one 
young  wife  that  her  husband  should  be  forced 
to  go  before  the  single  men  whom  she  knew; 
but  in  the  main  the  temper  that  showed  itself 
bore  witness  both  to  the  feeling  and  the  intel- 
ligence that  our  people  are  bringing  to  bear 
on  the  war.  One  woman  said  her  husband  was 
a  sergeant  in  a  well-known  regiment.  He 
thought  the  world  of  his  men,  and  whenever 
one  was  killed,  he  must  be  at  the  burying. 
"He  can't  bear,  you  know" — she  added  shyly 
— "they  should  feel  alone."  She  had  three 
brothers-in-law  "out"  —  one  recently  killed. 
One  was  an  ambulance  driver  under  the  R.  A. 
M.  C.  He  had  five  small  children,  but  had 
volunteered.  "He  doesn't  say  much  about  the 
war,  except  that  'Tommies  are  wonderful. 
They  never  complain.'  "  She  notices  a  change 
in  his  character.  He  was  always  good  to  his 
wife  and  children — "but  now  he's  splendid!" 
The  brother  of  another  woman  had  been  a 
jockey  in  Belgium,  had  liked  the  country  and 


210  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

"the  people.  When  war  broke  out  he  "felt  he 
must  fight  for  them."  He  came  home  at  once 
and  enlisted.  Another  brother  had  been  a 
stoker  on  a  war-ship  at  the  Dardanelles,  and 
was  in  the  famous  landing  of  April  25.  Bul- 
lets "thick  and  fast  like  hailstorm.  Terrible 
times  collecting  the  dead!  Her  brother  had 
worked  hard  forming  burial  parties.  Was  now 
probably  going  to  the  Tigris.  Wrote  jolly 
letters!" 

Then  there  was  the  little  woman  born  and 
bred  in  the  Army,  with  all  the  pride  of  the 
Army — a  familiar  type.  Husband  a  sergeant 
in  the  Guards — was  gymnastic  instructor  at  a 
northern  town — and  need  not  have  gone  to  the 
war,  but  felt  "as  a  professional  soldier"  he 
ought  to  go.  Three  brothers  in  the  Army — 
one  a  little  drummer-boy  of  sixteen,  badly 
wounded  in  the  retreat  from  Mons.  Her  sailor 
brother  had  died — probably  from  exposure,  in 
the  North  Sea.  The  most  cheerful,  plucky 
little  creature!  "We  are  Army  people,  and 
must  expect  to  fight." 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  211 

Well — you  say  you  "would  like  America  to 
visualise  the  effort,  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  Eng- 
lish men  and  women  who  are  determined  to 
see  this  war  through."  There  was,  I  thought, 
a  surprising  amount  of  cheerful  effort,  of  un- 
derstanding self-sacrifice  in  those  nine  homes, 
where  my  companion's  friendly  talk  drew  out 
the  family  facts  without  difficulty.  And  I  am 
convinced  that  if  I  had  spent  days  instead  of 
hours  in  following  her  through  the  remaining 
tenements  in  these  huge  and  populous  blocks 
the  result  would  have  been  practically  the  same. 
The  nation  is  behind  the  war,  and  behind  the 
Government — solidly  determined  to  win  this 
war,  and  build  a  new  world  after  it. 

As  to  the  work  of  our  women,  I  have  de- 
scribed something  of  it  in  the  munitions  area, 
and  if  this  letter  were  not  already  too  long,  I 
should  like  to  dwell  on  much  else — the  army 
of  maidens,  who,  as  V.  A.  D.'s  (members  of 
Voluntary  Aid  Detachments),  trained  by  the 
Red  Cross,  have  come  trooping  from  Eng- 
land's most  luxurious  or  comfortable  homes. 


212  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  are  doing  invaluable  work  in  hundreds 
of  hospitals;  to  begin  with,  the  most  menial 
scrubbing  and  dish-washing,  and  by  now  the 
more  ambitious  and  honourable — but  not  more 
indispensable — tasks  of  nursing  itself.  In  this 
second  year  of  the  war,  the  first  army  of  V.  A. 
D.'s,  now  promoted,  has  everywhere  been  suc- 
ceeded by  a  fresh  levy,  aglow  with  the  same 
eagerness  and  the  same  devotion  as  the  first. 
Or  I  could  dwell  on  the  women's  hospitals — 
especially  the  remarkable  hospital  in  Endell 
Street,  entirely  ofiicered  by  women;  where 
some  hundreds  of  male  patients  accept  the 
surgical  and  medical  care  of  women  doctors, 
and  adapt  themselves  to  the  light  and  easy 
discipline  maintained  by  the  women  of  the 
staff,  with  entire  confidence  and  grateful  good- 
will. To  see  a  woman  dentist  at  work  on  a 
soldier's  mouth,  and  a  woman  quartermaster 
presiding  over  her  stores,  and  managing,  be- 
sides, everything  pertaining  to  the  lighting, 
heating,  and  draining  of  the  hospital,  is  one 
more  sign  of  these  changed  and  changing  times. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  213 

The  work  done  by  the  Scottish  Women's  Hos- 
pital in  Serbia  will  rank  as  one  of  the  noblest 
among  the  minor  episodes  of  the  war.  The 
magnificent  work  of  British  nurses,  every- 
where, I  have  already  spoken  of.  And  every- 
where, too,  among  the  camps  in  England  and 
abroad,  behind  the  fighting  lines,  or  at  the  great 
railway- stations  here  or  in  France,  through 
which  the  troops  pass  backwards  and  forwards, 
hundreds  of  women  have  been  doing  ardent 
yet  disciplined  service — giving  long  hours  in 
crowded  canteens  or  Y.  M.  C.  A.  huts  to  just 
those  small  kindly  offices,  which  bring  home 
to  the  British  soldier,  more  effectively  than 
many  things  more  ambitious,  what  the  British 
nation  feels  towards  him.  The  war  has  put 
an  end,  so  far  as  the  richer  class  is  concerned, 
to  the  busy  idleness  and  all  the  costly  make- 
believes  of  peace.  No  one  gives  "dinner-par- 
ties" in  the  old  sense  any  more ;  the  very  word 
"reception"  is  dying  out.  The  high  wages  that 
munition-work  has  brought  to  the  women  of 
the  working  class,  show  themselves,  no  doubt, 


214  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

in  some  foolish  dressing.    "You  should  see  the 
hats  round  here  on  a  Saturday!"  said  the  Man- 
ager of  a  Midland  factory.    But  I  am  bound 
to  say  he  spoke  of  it  proudly.    The  hats  were 
for  him  a  testimony  to  the  wages  paid  by  his 
firm;  and  he  would  probably  have  argued,  on 
the  girls'  part,  that  after  the  long  hours  and 
hard  work  of  the  week,  the  hats  were  a  per- 
fectly legitimate  "fling,"  and  human  nature 
must  out.    Certainly  the  children  of  the  work- 
ers are  better  fed  and  better  clothed,  which 
speaks  so  far  well  for  the  mothers;  and  recent 
Government  inquiries  seem  to  show  that  in 
spite  of  universal  employment,  and  high  wages, 
the  drunkenness  of  the  United  Kingdom  as  a 
whole  is  markedly  less,  while  at  the  same  time 
—  uncomfortable   paradox! — the   amount   of 
alcohol  consumed  is  greater.    One  hears  stories 
of  extravagance  among  those  who  have  been 
making  "war-profits,"  but  they  are  less  com- 
mon this  year  than  last ;  and  as  to  my  own  ex- 
perience, all  my  friends  are  wearing  their  old 
clothes,  and  the  West  End  dressmakers,  poor 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  215 

things,  in  view  of  a  large  section  of  the  public 
which  regards  it  as  a  crime  "to  buy  anything 
new"  are  either  shutting  down  till  better  days, 
or  doing  a  greatly  restricted  business.  Taxa- 
tion has  grown  much  heavier,  and  will  be  more 
and  more  severely  felt.  Yet  very  few  grumble, 
and  there  is  a  general  and  determined  cutting 
down  of  the  trappings  and  appendages  of  life, 
which  is  to  the  good  of  us  all. 

Undoubtedly,  there  is  a  very  warm  and  wide- 
spread feeling  among  us  that  in  this  war  the 
women  of  the  nation  have  done  uncommonly 
well!  You  will  remember  a  similar  stir  of 
grateful  recognition  in  America  after  your 
War  of  Secession,  connected  with  the  part 
played  in  the  nursing  and  sanitation  of  the 
war  by  the  women  of  the  Northern  States. 
The  feeling  here  may  well  have  an  important 
social  and  political  influence  when  the  war  is 
over;  especially  among  the  middle  and  upper 
classes.  It  may  be  counter-balanced  to  some 
extent  in  the  industrial  class,  by  the  disturb- 
ance and  anxiety  caused  in  many  trades,  but 


216  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

especially  in  the  engineering  trades,  by  that 
great  invasion  of  women  I  have  tried  to  de- 
scribe. But  that  the  war  will  leave  some  deep 
mark  on  that  long  evolution  of  the  share  of 
women  in  our  public  life,  which  began  in  the 
teeming  middle  years  of  the  last  century,  is, 
I  think,  certain. 

May  2nd. — So  I  come  to  the  end  of  the  task 
you  set  me! — with  what  gaps  and  omissions 
to  look  back  upon,  no  one  knows  so  well  as 
myself.  This  lettter  starts  on  its  way  to  you 
at  a  critical  moment  for  your  great  country, 
when  the  issue  between  the  United  States  and 
Germany  is  still  unsettled.  What  will  hap- 
pen? Will  Germany  give  way?  If  not,  what 
sort  of  relations  will  shape  themselves,  and 
how  quickly,  between  the  Central  Empires  and 
America?  To  express  myself  on  this  great 
matter  is  no  part  of  my  task;  although  no 
English  man  or  woman  but  will  watch  its  de- 
velopment with  a  deep  and  passionate  interest. 
What  may  be  best  for  you,  we  cannot  tell ;  the 
military  and  political  bearings  of  a  breach  be- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  217 

tween  the  United  States  and  Germany  on  our 
own  fortunes  are  by  no  means  clear  to  us. 
But  what  we  do  want,  in  any  case,  is  the  sym- 
pathy, the  moral  support  and  co-operation  of 
your  people.  We  have  to  thank  you  for  a 
thousand  generosities  to  our  wounded ;  we  bless 
you — as  comrades  with  you  in  that  old  Chris- 
tendom which  even  this  war  shall  not  destroy — 
for  what  you  have  done  in  Belgium — but  we 
want  you  to  understand  the  heart  of  England 
in  this  war,  and  not  to  be  led  away  by  the 
superficial  difficulties  and  disputes  that  no 
great  and  free  nation  escapes  in  time  of  crisis. 
Sympathy  with  France — France,  the  invaded, 
the  heroic — is  easy  for  America — for  us  all. 
She  is  the  great  tragic  figure  of  the  war — the 
whole  world  does  her  homage.  We  are  not  in- 
vaded— and  so  less  tragic,  less  appealing.  But 
we  are  fighting  the  fight  which  is  the  fight  of 
all  freemen  everywhere — against  the  wanton- 
ness of  military  power,  against  the  spirit  that 
tears  up  treaties  and  makes  peaceful  agree- 
ment between  nations  impossible — against  a 


218  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

cruelty  and  barbarism  in  war  which  brings  our 
civilisation  to  shame.  We  have  a  right  to  your 
sympathy — you  who  are  the  heirs  of  Wash- 
ington and  Lincoln,  the  trustees  of  liberty  ill 
the  New  World  as  we,  with  France,  are  in  the 
Old.  You  are  concerned — you  must  be  con- 
cerned— in  the  triumph  of  the  ideals  of  ordered 
freedom  and  humane  justice  over  the  ideals  of 
unbridled  force  and  ruthless  cruelty,  as  they 
have  been  revealed  in  this  war,  to  the  horror 
of  mankind.  The  nation  that  can  never,  to  all 
time,  wash  from  its  hands  the  guilt  of  the  Bel- 
givan  crime,  the  blood  of  the  Lusitania  victims, 
of  the  massacres  of  Louvain  and  Dinant,  of 
Aerschot  and  Termonde,  may  some  day  de- 
serve our  pity.  To-day  it  has  to  be  met  and 
conquered  by  a  will  stronger  than  its  own,  in 
the  interests  of  civilisation  itself. 

This  last  week,  at  the  close  of  which  I  am 
despatching  this  final  letter,  has  been  a  sombre 
week  for  England.  It  has  seen  the  squalid 
Irish  rising,  with  its  seven  days'  orgy  of  fire 
and  bloodshed  in  Dublin;  it  has  seen  the  sur- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  219 

render  at  Kut  of  General  Townshend  and  his 
starving  men ;  it  has  seen  also  a  strong  demon- 
stration in  Parliament  of  discontent  with  cer- 
tain phases  of  the  conduct  of  the  war.  And 
yet,  how  shall  I  convey  to  you  the  paradox 
that  we  in  England — our  soldiers  at  the  front, 
and  instructed  opinion  at  home — have  never 
been  so  certain  of  ultimate  victory  as  we  now 
are  ?  It  is  the  big  facts  that  matter :  the  steady 
growth  of  British  resources,  in  men  and  muni- 
tions, toward  a  maximum  which  we — and  Rus- 
sia— are  only  approaching,  while  that  of  the 
Central  Empires  is  past;  the  deepening  unity 
of  an  Empire  which  is  being  forged  anew  by 
danger  and  trial,  and  by  the  spirit  of  its  sons 
all  over  the  world — a  unity  against  which  the 
Irish  outrage,  paid  for  by  German  money,  dis- 
avowed by  all  that  is  truly  Ireland,  Unionist 
or  Nationalist,  and  instantly  effaced,  as  a  mere 
demonstration,  by  the  gallantry  at  the  same 
moment  of  Irish  soldiers  in  the  battle-line — 
lifts  its  treacherous  hand  in  vain;  the  increas- 
ing and  terrible  pressure  of  the  British  block- 


220  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ade  of  Germany,  equivalent,  as  some  one  has 
lately  said,  every  twenty-four  hours  that  it  is 
maintained,  to  a  successful  action  in  the  field; 
the  magnificent  resistance  of  an  indomitable 
France;  the  mounting  strength  of  a  reorgan- 
ised Russia.  This  island-state — let  me  repeat 
it  with  emphasis — was  not  prepared  for,  and 
had  no  expectation  of  a  Continental  war,  such 
as  we  are  now  fighting.  The  fact  cries  aloud 
from  the  records  of  the  struggle;  it  will  com- 
mand the  ear  of  history;  and  it  acquits  us  for 
ever  from  the  guilt  of  the  vast  catastrophe. 
But  Great  Britain  has  no  choice  now  but  to 
fight  to  the  end — and  win.  She  knows  it,  and 
those  who  disparage  her  are  living  in  a  blind 
world.  As  to  the  difficulty  of  the  task — as  to 
our  own  failures  and  mistakes  in  learning  how 
to  achieve  it — we  have  probably  fewer  illusions 
than  those  who  criticise  us.  But  we  shall  do  it 
— or  perish. 


May  5th, — Since  the  preceding  lines  were 
written,  the  "Military  Service  Bill"  bringing 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  221 

to  the  Colours  "every  British  male  subject" 
between  the  ages  of  18  and  41,  except  when 
legally  exempted,  has  passed  the  House  of 
Commons  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  and 
will  be  law  immediately.  And  the  Prime  Min- 
ister informed  Parliament  three  days  ago,  that 
"the  total  naval  and  military  effort  of  the 
Empire  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  exceeds 
five  million  men." 

With  these  two  facts,  these  Letters  may  fitly 
close.  Those  who  know  England  best,  her 
history,  and  the  temperament  of  her  people, 
will  best  appreciate  what  they  mean. 


VII 

AN    EPILOGUE 

August  16,  1916. 
I 

It  is  now  three  months  since  I  finished  the 
six  preceding  Letters,  written  in  response  to 
an  urgent  call  from  America;  nor  did  I  then 
anticipate  any  renewal  of  my  work.  But  while 
a  French  translation  of  the  six  Letters  has 
been  passing  through  the  Press,  an  appeal  has 
been  made  to  me  from  France  to  add  an  Epi- 
logue, or  supplementary  Letter,  briefly  re- 
capitulating the  outstanding  facts  or  events 
which  in  those  three  months  have  marked  the 
British  share  in  the  war,  and  played  their  part 
in  the  immense  transformation  of  the  general 
outlook  which  has  taken  place  during  those 
months.  Not  an  easy  task!  One  thinks  first 
of  one's  own  inadequacy ;  and  then  remembers, 

as  before,  that  one  is  a  unit  in  a  nation  under 

222 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  223 

orders.  I  must  therefore  do  what  I  can.  And 
perhaps  other  readers,  also,  of  this  little  book, 
in  America  and  England,  as  they  look  back 
over  the  ever-changing  scene  of  the  war,  will 
not  find  this  renewed  attempt  to  summarise 
Britain's  part  in  it  as  it  has  developed  up  to 
the  present  date  (August  16,  1916)  unwel- 
come. The  outstanding  facts  of  the  last  three 
months,  as  I  see  them,  are,  for  Great  Brit- 
ain:— 

1.  The  immense  increase  in  the  output  of 
British  Munitions  of  War; 

2.  The  Naval  Battle  of  Jutland; 

3.  The  Allied  offensive  on  the  Somme. 
The  first  and  third  of  these  events  are,  of 

course,  so  far  as  the  latter  concerns  Great 
Britain,  the  natural  and  logical  outcome  of 
that  "England's  Effort"  of  which  I  tried— how 
imperfectly! — to  give  a  connected  account 
three  months  ago. 

At  that  time  the  ever-mounting  British  ef- 
fort, though  it  had  reached  colossal  dimensions, 
though  everybody  aware  of  it  was  full  of  a 


224  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

steadily  growing  confidence  as  to  its  final  re- 
sult, had  still  to  be  tested  by  those  greater 
actions  to  which  it  was  meant  to  lead.  After 
the  local  failures  at  the  Dardanelles,  and  in 
Mesopotamia,  Great  Britain  was  again,  for  a 
time,  everywhere  on  the  defensive,  though  it 
was  a  very  vigorous  and  active  defensive ;  and 
the  magnificent  stand  made  by  the  French  at 
Verdun  was  not  only  covering  France  herself 
with  glory,  and  kindling  the  hearts  of  all  who 
love  her  throughout  the  world,  but  under  its 
shield  the  new  armies  of  Great  Britain  were 
still  being  steadily  perfected,  and  wonderfully 
armed ;  time  was  being  given  to  Russia  for  re- 
organisation and  re-equipment,  and  time  was 
all  she  wanted ;  while  Germany,  vainly  dashing 
her  strength  in  men  and  guns  against  the 
heights  of  Verdun,  in  the  hope  of  provoking 
her  enemies  on  the  Western  front  to  a  prema- 
ture offensive,  doomed  to  exhaustion  before  it 
had  achieved  its  end,  was  met  by  the  iron  re- 
solve of  both  the  French  and  British  Govern- 
ments,  advised   by  the   French   and   British 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  225 

Commanders  in  the  field,  to  begin  that  offen- 
sive only  at  their  own  time  and  place,  when  the 
initiative  was  theirs,  and  everything  was  ready. 
But  the  scene  has  greatly  altered.  Let  me 
take  Munitions  first.  In  February,  it  will  be 
remembered  by  those  who  have  read  the  pre- 
ceding Letters,  I  was  a  visitor,  by  the  kind- 
ness of  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  then  in  Mr. 
Lloyd  George's  hands,  to  a  portion  of  the 
munitions  field — in  the  Midlands,  on  the  Tyne, 
and  on  the  Clyde.  At  that  moment,  Great 
Britain,  as  far  as  armament  was  concerned, 
was  in  the  mid-stream  of  a  gigantic  movement 
which  had  begun  in  the  summer  of  1915,  set 
going  by  the  kindling  energy  of  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  and  seconded  by  the  roused  strength 
of  a  nation  which  was  not  the  industrial  pioneer 
of  the  whole  modern  world  for  nothing,  how- 
ever keenly  others,  during  the  last  half-century, 
have  pressed  upon — or  in  some  regions  passed 
— her.  Everywhere  I  found  new  workshops 
already  filled  with  workers,  a  large  proportion 
of  them  women,  already  turning  out  a  mass 


226  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

of  shell  which  would  have  seemed  incredible 
to  soldiers  and  civilians  alike  during  the  first 
months  of  the  war ;  while  the  tale  of  howitzers, 
trench-mortars,  machine-guns,  and  the  rest, 
was  running  up  week  by  week,  in  the  vast 
extensions  already  added  to  the  other  works. 
But  everywhere,  too,  I  saw  huge,  empty  work- 
shops, waiting  for  their  machines,  or  just  set- 
ting them  up ;  and  everywhere  the  air  was  full 
of  rumours  of  the  new  industrial  forces — above 
all,  of  the  armies  of  women — that  were  to  be 
brought  to  bear.  New  towns  were  being  built 
for  them ;  their  workplaces  and  their  tools  were 
being  got  ready  for  them,  as  in  that  vast  filling 
factory — or  rather  town — on  the  Clyde  which 
I  described  in  my  third  Letter.  But  in  many 
quarters  they  were  not  yet  there;  only  one 
heard,  as  it  were,  the  tramp  of  their  advancing 
feet. 

But  to-day !  Those  great  empty  workshops 
that  I  saw  in  February,  in  the  making,  or  the 
furnishing,  are  now  full  of  workers  and  ma- 
chines; and  thousands  like  them  all  over  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  227 

country.  Last  night  (Aug.  15) ,  the  new  Min- 
ister of  Munitions,  Mr.  Montagu,  who,  a  few 
weeks  ago,  succeeded  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  now 
Minister  for  War,  rendered  an  account  of  his 
department  up  to  date,  which  amazed  even  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  will  surely  stir  the 
minds  of  men  throughout  the  British  Empire 
with  a  just  and  reasonable  pride.  The  "effete" 
and  "degenerate"  nation  has  roused  herself 
indeed ! 

Here  is  the  bare  resume  of  the  Minister's 
statement : — 

Ammunition. — The  British  output  of  ammunition  at 
the  beginning  of  the  war  was  intended  for  an  army  of 
200,000  men. 

Naturally,  the  output  rose  steadily  throughout  the  first 
year  of  war. 

But — the  same  output  which  in  1914-15  took  12  months 
to  produce  could  now  be  produced — 

As  to  1 8-pounder  ammunition,  in  3  weeks 

"      Field  howitzer         "  in  2  weeks 

"      Medium  gun  and  howitzer  ammunition,  in  1 1  days 
"      Heavy  shell,  in  4  days 

We  are  sending  over  to  France  every  week  as  much  as 
the  whole  pre-war  stock  of  land  service  ammunition  in 
the  country. 


228  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

As  to  guns,  I  would  ask  my  readers  to  turn 
back  to  the  second  and  third  chapters  in  this 
little  book,  which  show  something  of  the  hu- 
man side  and  the  daily  detail  of  this  great  busi- 
ness, and  then  to  look  at  this  summary: — 

Every  month,  now,  we  are  turning  out  nearly  twice  as 
many  big  guns  as  were  in  existence  for  land  service — 
i.  e.,  not  naval  guns — when  the  Ministry  of  Munitions 
came  into  being  (June,  1915). 

Between  June,  1915,  and  June,  1916,  the  monthly  out- 
put of  heavy  guns  has  increased  6-fold — and  the  present 
output  will  soon  be  doubled. 

For  every  100  eighteen-pounders  turned  out  in  the  first 
10  months  of  the  war,  we  are  now  turning  out  500. 

We  are  producing  18  times  as  many  machine-guns. 

Of  rifles — the  most  difficult  of  all  war  material  to  pro- 
duce quickly  in  large  quantities — our  weekly  home  pro- 
duction is  now  3  times  as  great  as  it  was  a  year  ago.  We 
are  supplying  our  Army  overseas  with  rifles  and  machine- 
guns  entirely  from  home  sources. 

Of  small-arms  ammunition  our  output  is  3  times  as 
great  as  a  year  ago. 

We  are  producing  66  times  as  much  high  explosive  as 
at  the  beginning  of  1915 ;  and  our  output  of  bombs  is  33 
times  as  great  as  it  was  last  year. 

At  the  same  time,  what  is  Great  Britain 
doing  for  her  Allies? 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  229 

The  loss  of  her  Northern  Provinces,  absorbed  by  the 
German  invasion,  has  deprived  France  of  three-quarters 
of  her  steel.  We  are  now  sending  to  France  one-third 
of  the  whole  British  production  of  shell-steel. 

We  are  also  supplying  the  Allies  with  the  constituents 
of  high  explosive  in  very  large  quantities,  prepared  by 
our  National  factories. 

We  are  sending  to  the  Allies  millions  of  tons  of  coal 
and  coke  every  month,  large  quantities  of  machinery, 
and  20  per  cent,  of  our  whole  production  of  machine  tools 
(indispensable  to  shell  manufacture). 

We  are  supplying  Russia  with  millions  of  pairs  of 
Army  boots. 

And  in  the  matter  of  ammunition,  we  have 
not  only  enormously  increased  the  quantity 
produced — we  have  greatly  improved  its  qual- 
ity. The  testimony  of  the  French  experts — 
themselves  masters  in  these  arts  of  death — as 
conveyed  through  M.  Thomas,  is  emphatic. 
The  new  British  heavy  guns  are  "admirably; 
made" — "most  accurate" — "most  efficient." 

Meanwhile  a  whole  series  of  chemical  prob- 
lems with  regard  to  high  explosives  have  been 
undertaken  and  solved  by  Lord  Moulton's  de- 
partment. If  it  was  ever  true  that  science  was 
neglected  by  the  War  Office,  it  is  certainly; 


230  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

true  no  longer;  and  the  soldiers  at  the  front, 
who  have  to  make  practical  use  of  what  our 
scientific  chemists  and  our  explosive  factories 
at  home  are  producing,  are  entirely  satisfied. 

For  that,  as  Mr.  Montagu  points  out,  is  the 
sole  and  supreme  test.  How  has  the  vast 
activity  of  the  new  Ministry  of  Munitions — an 
activity  which  the  nation  owes — let  me  repeat 
it — to  the  initiative,  the  compelling  energy,  of 
Mr.  Lloyd  George — affected  our  armies  in  the 
field? 

The  final  answer  to  that  question  is  not  yet. 
The  Somme  offensive  is  still  hammering  at  the 
German  gates;  I  shall  presently  give  an  out- 
line of  its  course  from  its  opening  on  July  1st 
down  to  the  present.  But  meanwhile  what  can 
be  said  is  this. 

The  expenditure  of  ammunition  which  en- 
abled us  to  sweep  through  the  German  first 
lines,  in  the  opening  days  of  this  July,  almost 
with  ease,  was  colossal  beyond  all  precedent. 
The  total  amount  of  heavy  guns  and  ammu- 
nition manufactured  by  Great  Britain  in  the 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  231 

first  ten  months  of  the  war,  from  August, 
1914,  to  June  1,  1915,  would  not  have  kept 
the  British  bombardment  on  the  Somme  going 
for  a  single  day.    That  gives  some  idea  of  it. 

Can  we  keep  it  up?  The  German  papers 
have  been  consoling  themselves  with  the  re- 
flection that  so  huge  an  effort  must  have  ex- 
hausted our  supplies.  On  the  contrary,  says 
Mr.  Montagu.  The  output  of  the  factories, 
week  hy  week,  now  covers  the  expenditure  in 
the  field.  No  fear  now,  that  as  at  Loos,  as  at 
Neuve  Chapelle,  and  as  on  a  thousand  other 
smaller  occasions,  British  success  in  the  field 
should  be  crippled  and  stopped  by  shortage 
of  gun  and  shell! 

By  whom  has  this  result  been  brought  about? 
By  that  army  of  British  workmen — and  work- 
women— which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  in  little  more 
than  one  short  year  has  mobilised  throughout 
the  country.  The  Ministry  of  Munitions  is 
now  employing  three  millions  and  a  half  of 
workers — (a  year  ago  it  was  not  much  more 
than  a  million  and  a  half) — of  whom  400,000 


232  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

are  women;  and  the  staff  of  the  Ministry  has 
grown  from  3,000 — the  figure  given  in  my 
earlier  letters — to  5,000,  just  as  that  army  of 
women,  which  has  sprung  as  it  were  out  of  the 
earth  at  the  call  of  the  nation,  has  almost 
doubled  since  I  wrote  in  April  last.  Well  may 
the  new  Minister  say  that  our  toilers  in  factory 
and  forge  have  had  some  share  in  the  glorious 
recent  victories  of  Russia,  Italy,  and  France! 
Our  men  and  our  women  have  contributed  to 
the  re-equipment  of  those  gallant  armies  of 
Russia,  which,  a  month  or  six  weeks  earlier 
than  they  were  expected  to  move,  have  broken 
up  the  Austrian  front,  and  will  soon  be  once 
more  in  Western  Poland,  perhaps  in  East 
Prussia!  The  Italian  Army  has  drawn  from 
our  workshops  and  learnt  from  our  experi- 
ments. The  Serbian  Army  has  been  re-formed 
and  re-fitted. 

Let  us  sum  up.  The  Germans,  with  years 
of  preparation  behind  them,  made  this  war  a 
war  of  machines.  England,  in  that  as  in  other 
matters,  was  taken  by  surprise.    But  our  old 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  233 

and  proud  nation,  which  for  generations  led 
the  machine  industry  of  the  world,  as  soon  as 
it  realised  the  challenge — and  we  were  slow  to 
realise  it! — met  it  with  an  impatient  and  a 
fierce  energy  which  is  every  month  attaining  a 
greater  momentum  and  a  more  wonderful  re- 
sult. The  apparently  endless  supply  of  muni- 
tions which  now  feeds  the  British  front,  and 
the  comparative  lightness  of  the  human  cost  at 
which  the  incredibly  strong  network  of  the 
German  trenches  on  their  whole  first  line  sys- 
tem was  battered  into  ruin,  during  the  last  days 
of  June  and  the  first  days  of  July,  1916: — it 
is  to  effects  like  these  that  all  that  vast  indus- 
trial effort  throughout  Great  Britain,  of  which 
I  saw  and  described  a  fragment  three  months 
ago,  has  now  steadily  and  irresistibly  brought 
us. 

II 

This  then  is  perhaps  the  first  point  to  notice 
in  the  landscape  of  the  war,  as  we  look  back  on 
the  last  three  months.     For  on  it  everything 


234  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

else.  Naval  and  Military,  depends : — on  the  in- 
credibly heightened  output  of  British  work- 
shops, in  all  branches  of  war  material,  which 
has  been  attained  since  the  summer  of  last  year. 
In  it,  as  I  have  just  said,  we  see  an  ejfect  of  a 
great  cause — i.  e.,  of  the  "effort"  made  by 
Great  Britain,  since  the  war  broke  out,  to  bring 
her  military  strength  in  men  and  munitions  to 
a  point,  sufficient,  in  combination  with  the 
strength  of  her  Allies,  for  victory  over  the 
Central  Powers,  who  after  long  and  deliberate 
preparation  had  wantonly  broken  the  Euro- 
pean peace.  The  "effort"  was  for  us  a  new 
one,  provoked  by  Germany,  and  it  will  have 
far-reaching  civil  consequences  when  the  war 
is  over. 

In  the  great  Naval  victory  now  known  as 
the  Battle  of  Jutland,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
have  a  fresh  demonstration  on  a  greater  scale 
than  ever  before,  of  that  old,  that  root  fact, 
without  which  indeed  the  success  of  the  Allied 
effort  in  other  directions  would  be  impossible 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  235 

i.  e.,  the  overwhelming  strength  of  the  Brit- 
ish Navy,  and  its  mastery  of  the  Sea. 

In  a  few  earlier  pages  of  this  book,  I  have 
described  a  visit  which  the  British  Admiralty 
allowed  me  to  make  in  February  last  to  a 
portion  of  the  Fleet,  then  resting  in  a  north- 
ern harbour.  On  that  occasion,  at  the  Vice- 
Admiral's  luncheon-table,  there  sat  beside  me 
on  my  right,  a  tall  spare  man  with  the  intent 
face  of  one  to  whom  life  has  been  a  great  and 
strenuous  adventure,  accepted  in  no  boyish 
mood,  but  rather  in  the  spirit  of  the  scientific 
explorer,  pushing  endlessly  from  one  problem 
to  the  next,  and  passionate  for  all  experience 
that  either  unveils  the  world,  or  tests  himself. 
,We  talked  of  the  war,  and  my  projected  jour- 
ney. "I  envy  you!"  he  said,  his  face  lighting 
up.  "I  would  give  anything  to  see  our  Army 
in  the  field."  My  neighbour  was  Rear- Admiral 
Sir  Robert  Arbuthnot,  commanding  the  First 
Cruiser  Squadron,  who  went  down  with  his 
flagship  H.M.S.  Defence,  in  the  Battle  of  Jut- 
land, on  the  31st  of  May  last,  while  passing 


236  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

between  the  British  and  German  fleets,  under 
a  very  heavy  fire.  "It  is  probable,"  said  Ad- 
miral Jellicoe's  despatch,  "that  Sir  Robert 
Arbuthnot,  during  his  engagement  with  the 
enemy's  light  cruisers,  and  in  his  desire  to  com- 
plete their  destruction,  was  not  aware  of  the 
approach  of  the  enemy's  heavy  ships,  owing  to 
the  mist,  until  he  found  himself  in  close  prox- 
imity to  the  main  fleet,  and  before  he  could 
withdraw  his  ships,  they  were  caught  under  a 
heavy  fire  and  disabled."  So,  between  the 
fleets  of  Germany  and  England,  amid  the 
mists  of  the  May  evening,  and  the  storm  and 
smoke  of  battle,  my  courteous  neighbour  of 
three  months  before  found,  with  all  his  ship- 
mates, that  grave  in  the  "unharvested  sea" 
which  England  never  forgets  to  honour,  and 
from  which  no  sailor  shrinks.  At  the  same 
luncheon-table  were  two  other  Admirals  and 
many  junior  Ofiicers,  who  took  part  in  the 
same  great  action;  and  looking  back  upon  it, 
and  upon  the  notes  which  I  embodied  in  my 
first  Letter,  I  see  more  vividly  than  ever  how 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  237 

every  act  and  thought  of  those  brave  and 
practised  men,  among  whom  I  passed  those 
few — to  me — memorable  hours,  were  condi- 
tioned by  an  intense  expectation,  that  trained 
prevision  of  what  must  come,  which,  in  a  spe- 
cial degree,  both  stirs  and  steadies  the  mind  of 
the  modern  sailor. 

But  one  thing  perhaps  they  had  not  fore- 
seen— that  by  a  combination  of  mishaps  in  the 
first  reporting  of  the  battle,  the  great  action, 
which  has  really  demonstrated,  once  and  for 
all,  the  invincible  supremacy  of  Great  Britain 
at  sea,  which  has  reduced  the  German  Fleet 
to  months  of  impotence,  put  the  invasion  of 
these  islands  finally  out  of  the  question,  and 
enabled  the  British  blockade  to  be  drawn  round 
Germany  with  a  yet  closer  and  sterner  hand, 
was  made  to  appear,  in  the  first  announcements 
of  it,  almost  a  defeat.  The  news  of  our  losses 
— our  heavy  losses — came  first — came  almost 
alone.  The  Admiraltj^  with  the  stern  con- 
science of  the  British  official  mind,  announced 
them  as  they  came  in — bluntly — with  little  or 


238  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

no  qualification.  A  shock  of  alarm  went 
through  England!  For  what  had  we  paid  so 
sore  a  price?  Was  the  return  adequate,  and 
not  only  to  our  safety,  but  to  our  prestige? 

There  were  a  few  hours  when  both  Great 
Britain — outside  the  handful  of  men  who  knew 
^and  her  friends  throughout  the  world,  hung 
on  the  answer.  Meanwhile  the  German  lie, 
which  converted  a  defeat  for  Germany  into  a 
"victory,"  got  at  least  twenty-four  hours'  start, 
and  the  Imperial  Chancellor  made  quick  and 
sturdy  use  of  it  when  he  extracted  a  War  Loan 
of  £600,000,000  from  a  deluded  and  jubilant 
Reichstag.  Then  the  news  came  in  from  one 
quarter  after  another  of  the  six-mile  battle- 
line,  from  one  unit  after  another  of  the  greatest 
sea-battle  Britain  had  ever  fought,  and  by  the 
3rd  or  4th  of  June,  England,  drawing  half- 
ironic  breath  over  her  own  momentary  mis- 
giving, had  realised  the  truth — first — ^that  the 
German  Fleet  on  the  31st  had  only  escaped 
total  destruction  by  the  narrowest  margin,  and 
by  the  help  of  mist  and  darkness;  secondly— 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  239 

that  its  losses  were,  relatively  far  greater,  and 
in  all  probability,  absolutely,  greater  than  our 
own;  thirdly  —  that  after  the  British  battle- 
fleet  had  severed  the  German  navy  from  its 
base,  the  latter  had  been  just  able,  under  cover 
of  darkness,  to  break  round  the  British  ships, 
and  fly  hard  to  shelter,  pursued  by  our  sub- 
marines and  destroyers  through  the  night,  till 
it  arrived  at  Wilhelmshaven  a  battered  and 
broken  host,  incapable  at  least  for  months  to 
come  of  any  offensive  action  against  Great 
Britain  or  her  Allies.  Impossible  henceforth 
— for  months  to  come — to  send  a  German 
squadron  sufficiently  strong  to  harass  Russia 
in  the  Baltic !  Impossible  to  interfere  success- 
fully with  the  passage  of  Britain's  new  armies 
across  the  seas!  Impossible  to  dream  any 
longer  of  invading  English  coasts!  The  Brit- 
ish Fleet  holds  the  North  Sea  more  strongly 
than  it  has  ever  held  it ;  and  behind  the  barbed- 
wire  defences  of  Wilhfelmshaven  or  Heligoland 
the  German  Fleet  has  been  nursing  its  wounds. 
Some  ten  weeks  have  passed,  and  as  these 


240  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

results  have  become  plain  to  all  the  world,  the 
IGerman  lie,  or  what  remained  of  it,  has  begun 
!to  droop,  even  in  the  country  of  its  birth.  "Do 
not  let  us  suppose,"  says  Captain  Persius — 
the  most  honest  of  German  naval  critics,  in  a 
recent  article — "that  we  have  shaken  the  sea- 
power  of  England.  That  would  be  foolish- 
ness." While  Mr.  Balfour,  the  most  measured, 
the  most  veracious  of  men,  speaking  only  a 
few  days  ago  to  the  representatives  of  the 
Dominion  Parliaments,  who  have  been  visit- 
ing England,  says  quietly — "the  growth  of  our 
Navy,  since  the  outbreak  of  war,  which  has 
gone  on,  and  which  at  this  moment  is  still  go- 
ing on,  is  something  of  which  I  do  not  believe 
the  general  public  has  the  slightest  conception." 
For  the  general  public  has,  indeed,  but  vague 
ideas  of  what  is  happening  day  by  day  and 
week  by  week  in  the  great  shipyards  of  the 
^Clyde,  the  Tyne,  and  the  Mersey.  But  there, 
all  the  same,  the  workmen — and  workwomen — 
of  Great  Britain — (for  women  are  taking  an 
ever-increasing  share  in  the  lighter  tasks  of 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  241 

naval  engineering) — are  adding  incessantly 
to  the  sea-power  of  this  country,  acquiescing 
in  a  Government  control,  a  loosening  of  trade 
custom,  a  dilution  and  simplification  of  skilled 
labour,  which  could  not  have  been  dreamt  of 
before  the  war.  At  the  same  time  they  are 
meeting  the  appeal  of  Ministers  to  give  up  or 
postpone  the  holidays  they  have  so  richly 
earned,  for  the  sake  of  their  sons  and  brothers 
in  the  trenches,  with  a  dogged  "aye,  aye!"  in 
which  there  is  a  note  of  profound  understand- 
ing, of  invincible  and  personal  determination, 
but  rarely  heard  in  the  early  days  of  the  war. 

Ill 
So  much  for  the  Workshops  and  the  Navy. 
Now  before  I  turn  to  the  New  Armies  and  the 
Somme  offensive,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at 
the  present  facts  of  British  War  Finance.  By 
April  last,  the  date  of  my  sixth  Letter,  we  had 
raised  2,380  millions  sterling,  for  the  purposes 
of  the  war;  we  had  lent  500  millions  to  our 


242  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Allies,  and  we  were  spending  about  5  millions 
a  day  on  the  war.  According  to  a  statement 
recently  made  by  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer (August  10),  by  March  next  our  debt 
will  have  risen  to  3,440  millions  sterling,  1,060 
millions  more  than  it  stood  at  in  March  last; 
our  advances  to  our  Allies  will  have  increased 
to  800  millions,  while  our  daily  war  expendi- 
ture remains  about  the  same. 

Mr.  McKenna's  tone  in  announcing  these 
figures  was  extraordinarily  cheerful.  "We 
have  every  reason,"  he  said,  amid  the  applause 
of  the  House  of  Commons — "to  be  proud  of 
the  manner  in  which  British  credit  has  stood 
the  strain."  The  truth  is  that  by  March  next, 
at  the  present  rate  of  expenditure,  our  total 
indebtedness  (deducting  the  advances  to  our 
Allies)  will  almost  exactly  equal  "one  year's 
national  income,"  i.  e.j  the  aggregate  of  the 
income  of  every  person  in  the  country.  But 
if  a  man  having  an  income  of  £5,000  a  year, 
were  to  owe  a  total  of  £5,000,  we  should  not 
Consider  his  position  very  serious.    "We  shall 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  243 

collect  a  revenue  in  one  year  equal  to  20  per 
cent,  of  the  whole  debt  {i.  e.y  522  millions  ster- 
ling) ,  and  we  shall  be  able  to  pay,  out  of  exist- 
ing taxation^  the  interest  on  the  debt,  and  a 
considerable  sinking-fund,  and  shall  still  have 
left  a  large  margin  for  the  reduction  of  taxa- 
tion"— words  which  left  a  comfortable  echo  in 
the  ears  of  the  nation.  Meanwhile  British 
trade — based  on  British  sea-power — has  shown 
extraordinary  buoyancy,  the  exports  steadily 
increasing;  so  that  the  nation,  in  the  final  words 
of  the  Chancellor,  feels  "no  doubt  whatever 
that  we  shall  be  able  to  maintain  our  credit  to 
the  end  of  the  war,  no  matter  how  long  it  may 
last." 

But  do  not  let  it  be  supposed  that  this  huge 
revenue  is  being  raised  without  sacrifice,  with- 
out effort.  It  means — for  the  present — as  I 
have  already  pointed  out,  the  absorption  by 
the  State  of  five  shillings  in  the  pound  from 
the  income  of  every  citizen,  above  a  moderate 
minimum,  and  of  a  lesser  but  still  heavy  tax 
from  those  below  that  minimum ;  it  means  new 


244  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

and  increased  taxation  in  many  directions ;  and, 
as  a  consequence,  heavy  increases  in  the  cost  of 
living;  it  means  sharply  diminished  spending 
for  large  sections  of  our  population,  and  seri- 
ous pinching  for  our  professional  and  middle 
classes. 

But  the  nation,  as  a  whole,  makes  no  lament. 
We  look  our  taxes  in  the  face,  and  we  are  be- 
ginning to  learn  how  to  save.  We  have  our 
hearts  fixed  on  the  future ;  and  we  have  counted 
the  cost. 

The  money  then  is  no  difficulty.  Our  re- 
sisting power,  our  prosperity  even,  under  the 
blows  of  war,  have  been  unexpectedly  great. 

But  what  are  we  getting  for  our  money? 

In  the  case  of  the  Navy,  the  whole  later 
course  of  the  war,  no  less  than  the  Battle  of 
Jutland,  has  shown  what  the  British  Navy 
means  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies.  It  is  as  I 
have  said,  the  root  fact  in  the  war;  and  in  the 
end,  it  will  be  the  determining  fact;  although, 
of  itself,  it  cannot  defeat  Germany  as  we  must 
defeat  her;  at  any  rate  in  any  reasonable  time. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  245 

Then  as  to  the  Army.  Take  first  of  all  the 
administrative  side.  To  what — in  the  last  four 
months — has  come  that  wonderful  system  of 
organisation  and  supply  I  tried  to  sketch  in 
my  fourth  Letter,  largely  in  the  words  of  some 
of  the  chief  actors  in  it? 

Within  the  last  fortnight,  a  skilled  observer 
has  been  reporting  to  the  British  public  his  im- 
pressions of  the  "Army  behind  the  Lines"  in 
France,  as  I  saw  a  portion  of  it  last  February, 
in  the  great  British  supply  bases  and  hospital 
camps,  on  the  lines  of  communication,  and 
throughout  the  immense  and  varied  activities 
covered  by  the  British  motor  transport. 

"The  Germans,"  says  this  recent  eye-witness, 
"have  persisted  that,  even  if  we  could  find  the 
men,  we  could  not  make  the  machine,  which 
they  have  been  perfecting  for  forty  years  and 
more.  But  it  is  here! — operating  with  perfect 
smootliness ;  a  machine,  which  in  its  mere  mass 
and  intricacy,  almost  staggers  the  imagination. 
One  cannot  speak  of  the  details  of  the  system 
for  fear  of  saying  something  which  should  not 


246  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

be  told;  but  it  is  stupendous  in  its  proportion, 
dealing  as  it  does  with  the  methodical  handling 
of  the  men  in  their  hundreds  of  thousands,  of 
all  their  equipment  and  supplies,  food,  miscel- 
laneous baggage  and  ammunition,  and  with  the 
endless  trains  of  guns — guns — guns,  and  shells, 
by  millions  upon  millions,  all  brought  from 
England,  and  all  here  in  their  place,  or  moved 
from  place  to  place  with  the  rhythm  of  clock- 
work. One  cannot  convey  any  idea  of  it,  nor 
grasp  it  in  its  entirety;  but  day  by  day  the 
immensity  of  it  grows  on  one,  and  one  realises 
how  trivial  beside  it  has  been  anything  that 
British  military  organisation  has  had  to  do  in 
the  past.  That  is  the  real  miracle;  not  the 
mere  millions  of  men,  nor  even  their  bravery, 
but  this  huge  f  rictionless  machine  of  which  they 
are  a  part — this  thing  which  Great  Britain  has 
put  together  here  in  the  last  twenty  months." 


ENGLAND'S   EFFORT  247 

IV 

But  just  as  in  March  my  thoughts  pressed 
eagerly  forward,  from  the  sight  allowed  me  of 
the  machine,  to  its  uses  on  the  battle-front,  to 
that  line  of  living  and  fighting  men  for  which 
it  exists — so  now. 

Only,  since  I  stood  upon  the  hill  near  Pop- 
eringhe  on  March  2nd,  that  line  of  men  has 
been  indefinitely  strengthened;  and  the  main 
scene  of  battle  is  no  longer  the  Ypres  salient. 
Looking  southward   from  the  old  windmill, 
whose  supports  sheltered  us  on  that  cold  spring 
afternoon,  I  knew  that,  past  Bailleul,  and  past 
Neuve  Chapelle,  I  was  looking  straight  toward 
Albert  and  the  Somme,  and  I  knew  too  that 
it  was  there  that  the  British  were  taking  over 
a  new  portion  of  the  line, — so  that  we  might 
be  of  some  increased  support — all  that  was 
then  allowed  us  by  the  Allied  Command! — ^to 
that  incredible  defence  of  Verdun,  which  was 
in  all  our  minds  and  hearts. 

But  what  I  could  not  know  was  that  in  that 


248  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

misty  distance  was  hidden — four  months  away 
— a  future  movement,  at  which  no  one  then 
guessed,  outside  the  higher  brains  of  the  Army. 
The  days  went  on.  The  tide  of  battle  ebbed 
and  flowed  round  Verdun.  The  Crown  Prince 
hewed  and  hacked  his  way,  with  enormous 
loss  to  Germany,  to  points  within  three  and 
four  miles  of  the  coveted  town — fortress  no 
longer.  But  there  France  stopped  him — like 
the  beast  of  prey  that  has  caught  its  claws  in 
the  iron  network  it  is  trying  to  batter  down, 
and  cannot  release  them;  and  there  he  is  still. 
Meanwhile,  in  June,  seven  to  eight  weeks  be- 
fore the  expected  moment,  Brusiloff's  attack 
broke  loose,  and  the  Austrian  front  began  to 
crumble;  just  in  time  to  bring  the  Italians  wel- 
come aid  in  the  Trentino. 

And  still  from  the  Somme  to  the  Yser,  the 
Anglo-French  forces  waited;  and  still  across 
the  Channel  poured  British  soldiers  and  Brit- 
ish guns.  In  industrial  England,  the  Whit- 
suntide holidays  had  been  given  up ;  and  there 
were  at  any  rate  some  people  who  knew  that 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  249 

there  would  be  no  August  holidays  either. 
Leave  and  letters  had  been  stopped.  But  there 
had  been  apparent  signs,  wrongly  interpreted, 
before.  The  great  Allied  attack  on  the  West 
— ^was  it  ready,  at  last? 

Then — with  the  27th  of  June,  along  the 
whole  British  battle-front  of  90  miles,  there 
sprang  up  a  violent  and  continuous  bombard- 
ment varied  by  incessant  raids  on  the  enemy 
lines.  Those  who  witnessed  that  bombardment 
can  hardly  find  words  in  which  to  describe  it. 
"It  was  an  extraordinary  and  a  terrible  spec- 
tacle," says  a  correspondent.  "Within  the 
dreadful  zone  the  woods  are  leafless,  chateau 
and  farm  and  village,  alike,  mere  heaps  of 
ruins."  Ah !  ce  beau  pays  de  France — with  all 
its  rich  and  ancient  civilisation — it  is  not 
French  hearts  alone  that  bleed  for  you!  But 
it  was  the  voice  of  deliverance,  of  vengeance, 
that  was  speaking  in  the  guns  which  crashed 
incessantly  day  and  night,  while  shells  of  all 
calibres  rained — so  many  to  the  second — from 
every  yard  of  the  British  front,  on  the  German 


250  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

lines.  The  correspondents  with  the  British 
Headquarters  could  only  speculate  with  held 
breath,  as  to  what  was  happening  under  that 
ghastly  veil  of  smoke  and  fire  on  the  horizon, 
and  what  our  infantry  would  find  when  the 
artillery  work  was  done,  and  the  attack  was 
launched. 

The  1st  of  July  dawned,  a  beautiful  sum- 
mer morning,  with  light  mists  dispersing  under 
the  sun.  Precisely  to  the  moment,  at  7.30 
A.  M.,  the  Allied  artillery  lifted  their  guns, 
creating  a  dense  barrage  of  fire  between  the 
German  front  and  its  support  trenches,  while 
the  British  and  French  infantry  sprang  over 
their  parapets  and  rushed  to  the  attack  of  the 
German  first  line;  the  British  on  a  front  of 
some  twenty-five  miles,  the  French,  on  about 
ten  miles,  on  both  sides  of  the  Somme.  The 
English  journalists,  who,  watch  in  hand,  saw 
our  men  go,  "knowing  what  it  was  they  were 
going  to,  marvelled  for  the  fiftieth  time  at  the 
way  in  which  British  manhood  has  proved 
itself,  in  this  most  terrible  of  all  wars." 


ENGLAND'S   EFFORT  251 

But  though  it  was  a  grand,  it  was  an  anxious 
moment  for  those  who  had  trained  and  shaped 
the  New  Armies  of  Britain.  How  would  they 
bear  themselves,  these  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  British  and  Imperial  volunteers,  men,  some 
of  them,  with  the  shortest  possible  training 
compatible  with  efficiency — against  the  famous 
troops  of  Germany — beside  the  veteran,  the 
illustrious  army  of  France? 

Four  hours  after  the  fighting  began.  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  telegraphed :  "Attack  launched 
north  of  River  Somme  this  morning  at  7.30 
A.  M.  In  conjunction  with  French,  British 
troops  have  broken  into  German  forward  sys- 
tem of  defences,  on  front  of  sixteen  miles. 
Fighting  is  continuing.  French  attack  on  our 
immediate  right  proceeding  equally  satisfac- 
torily." Twelve  hours  later,  on  the  same  day, 
when  the  summer  night  had  fallen  on  the  ter- 
rible battle-field,  the  British  Commander-in- 
Chief  added: — "Heavy  fighting  has  continued 
all  day  between  the  rivers  Somme  and  Ancre. 
On  the  right  of  our  attack  we  have  captured 


252  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

the  German  labyrinth  of  trenches  on  a  front 
of  seven  miles  to  a  depth  of  1,000  yards,  and 
have  stormed  and  occupied  the  strongly  forti- 
fied villages  of  Montauban  and  Mametz.  In 
the  centre  on  a  front  of  four  miles  we  have 
gained  many  strong  points.  North  of  the 
Ancre  Valley  the  battle  has  been  equally  vio- 
lent, and  in  this  area  we  have  been  unable  to 
retain  portions  of  the  ground  gained  in  our 
first  attacks,  while  other  portions  remain  in  our 
possession.  .  .  .  Up  to  date,  2,000  German 
prisoners  have  passed  through  our  collecting 
stations.  The  large  number  of  the  enemy  dead 
on  the  battle-field  indicate  that  the  German 
losses  have  been  very  severe." 

So  much  for  the  first  day's  news.  On  the 
following  day  Fricourt  was  captured;  and 
the  prisoners  went  up  to  3,500,  together  with 
a  quantity  of  war  material.  Meanwhile  the 
French  on  the  right  had  done  brilliantly,  cap- 
turing five  villages,  and  6,000  prisoners.  The 
attack  was  well  begun. 

And  the  New  Armies? — "Kitchener's  Men"? 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  253 

^'Whatever  we  have  imagined  of  our  New 
Armies,"  says  an  eye-witness  of  the  first  day's 
battle,  "they  are  better  than  we  can  have  ever 
dared  to  hope.  Nothing  has  in  any  case 
stopped  them,  except  being  killed."  And  a 
neutral  who  saw  the  attack  on  Mametz  told  the 
same  eye-witness  that  he  had  seen  most  of  the 
fighting  in  the  world  in  recent  years,  and  that 
he  "did  not  believe  a  more  gallant  feat  was 
ever  performed  in  war."  The  story  of  the 
British  advance  was  written  "in  the  dead  upon 
the  ground,  and  in  the  positions  as  they  stand." 
"Nothing  which  the  Japanese  did  in  the  Rus- 
sian War"  was  more  entirely  heroic. 

But  let  me  carry  on  the  story. 

On  Tuesday,  July  11th,  Sir  Douglas  Haig 
reported :  "After  ten  days  and  nights  of  con- 
tinuous fighting  our  troops  have  completed  the 
methodical  capture  of  the  whole  of  the  enemy's 
first  system  of  defence  on  a  front  of  14,000 
yards. 

"This  system  of  defence  consisted  of  numer- 
ous and  continuous  lines  of  foretrenches,  sup- 


254.  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

port  trenches  and  reserve  trenches,  extending 
to  various  depths  of  from  2,000  to  4,000  yards, 
and  included  five  strongly  fortified  villages, 
numerous  heavily  wired  and  intrenched  woods, 
and  a  large  number  of  immensely  strong  re- 
doubts." 

The  villages  captured  were  Fricourt,  Ma- 
metz,  Montauban,  La  Boiselle,  and  Contal- 
maison — the  latter  captured  on  July  10th, 
after  particularly  fierce  fighting.  Every  ob- 
server dwells  on  "the  immense  strength  of  the 
German  defences."  "All  the  little  villages 
and  woods,  each  eminence  and  hollow,  have 
been  converted  into  a  fortress  as  formidable 
as  the  character  of  the  ground  makes  possible." 
The  German  has  omitted  nothing  "that  could 
protect  him  against  such  a  day  as  this." 

Yet  steadily,  methodically,  with  many  a 
pause  for  consolidation  of  the  ground  gained, 
and  for  the  bringing  up  of  the  heavy  guns, 
the  British  advance  goes  forward  —  toward 
Bapaume  and  Lille;  while  the  French  press 
brilliantly   on  toward   Peronne — both  move- 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  255 

ments  aimed  at  the  vital  German  comjnunica- 
tions  through  France  and  Belgium.  Every  step 
of  ground,  as  the  Allies  gain  it,  "is  wrecked 
with  mines,  torn  with  shell,  and  watered  with 
the  blood  of  brave  men."  The  wood-fighting, 
amid  the  stripped  and  gaunt  trunks  rising 
from  labyrinths  of  wire,  is  specially  terrible; 
and  below  the  ground  everywhere  are  the  deep 
pits  and  dugouts,  which  have  not  only  shel- 
tered the  enemy  from  our  fire,  but  concealed 
the  machine-guns,  which  often  when  our  men 
have  passed  over,  emerge  and  take  them  in 
the  rear.  The  German  machine-guns  seem  to 
be  endless;  they  are  skilfully  concealed,  and 
worked  with  the  utmost  ability  and  courage. 

But  nothing  daunts  the  troops  attacking 
day  and  night,  in  the  name  of  patriotism,  of 
liberty,  of  civilisation.  Men  from  Yorkshire 
and  Lancashire,  from  Northumberland,  West- 
moreland and  Cumberland,  the  heart  of  Eng- 
land's sturdy  north;  men  from  Sussex  and 
Kent,  from  Somerset  and  Devon;  the  Scotch 
regiments ;  the  Ulster  Division,  once  the  Ulster 


256  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

Volunteers;  the  men  of  Munster  and  Con- 
naught;  the  town-lads  of  Manchester;  the 
youths  of  Cockney  London: — all  their  names 
are  in  the  great  story.  "There  were  no  strag- 
glers— none!"  says  an  officer,  describing  in  a 
kind  of  wonder  one  of  the  fierce  wood-attacks. 
And  these  are  not  the  seasoned  troops  of  a 
Continental  Army.  They  belong  to  regiments 
and  corps  which  did  not  exist,  except  in  name, 
eighteen  months  ago;  they  are  units  from  the 
four-million  army  that  Great  Britain  raised 
for  this  struggle,  before  she  passed  her  Mili- 
tary Service  Law.  The  "Old  Army,"  the  Ex- 
peditionary Force,  which  the  nation  owed  to 
the  organising  genius  of  Lord  Haldane  and 
his  General  Staff,  has  passed  away,  passed  into 
history,  with  the  retreat  from  Mons,  the  first 
victory  of  Ypres,  the  saving  of  the  Channel 
ports ;  but  its  spirit  remains,  and  its  traditions 
are  firmly  planted  in  the  new  attackers.  I 
think  of  the  men  I  saw  in  March,  during  that 
long  and  weary  wait;  of  the  desire — and  the 
patience — in  their  eyes. 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  257 

And  of  patience  they  and  the  nations  be- 
hind them  will  still  have  ample  need.  Since 
surprise  on  the  Somme  front  was  no  longer 
possible,  the  great  advance  has  gone  surely 
indeed,  but  more  slowly.  On  July  14,  after  de- 
lay caused  by  extraordinarily  heavj''  rains,  the 
German  second  line  was  breached,  and  their 
trenches  carried,  on  a  front  of  four  miles  and 
held  against  counter  attacks.  Longueval,  the 
wood  of  Bazcntin-le-Grand,  and  the  village, 
Bazentin-le-Petit,  were  attacked  and  captured 
with  an  elan  that  nothing  could  resist.  "The 
enemy  losses  in  guns,"  said  the  British  Head- 
quarters, "are  now  over  100.  We  have  not  lost 
one."  On  July  17,  Ovillers  was  cleared,  Wa- 
terlot  Farm  taken,  and  1,500  more  yards  of 
the  German  line.  The  British  had  by  now 
taken  11,000  prisoners,  to  a  somewhat  larger 
number  taken  by  the  French,  17  heavy  gims, 
37  field-guns,  30  trench  howitzers,  and  66 
machine-guns.  On  Saturday  night,  July  22- 
23,  the  greater  part  of  Pozieres,  on  the  high 
ground  toward  Bapaume,  was  taken.    "Short- 


258  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ly  after  midnight,"  wrote  the  official  corre- 
spondent at  Headquarters  with  the  Australian 
Imperial  Forces  in  France,  "on  the  23rd,  by  a 
splendid  night  attack,  the  Australians  took  the 
greater  portion  of  Pozieres."  The  previous 
bombardment  had  been  magnificent.  "I  had 
never  before  seen  such  a  spectacle.  A  large 
sector  of  the  horizon  was  lit  up  not  by  single 
flashes,  but  by  a  continuous  band  of  quivering 
light."  And  under  the  protection  of  the 
guns,  the  Anzacs  swept  forward,  passing  over 
trenches,  so  entirely  obliterated  by  shell-fire 
that  they  were  often  not  recognised  as  trenches 
at  all,  till  they  were  in  the  heart  of  the  village. 
Then  for  two  days  they  fought  from  house  to 
house,  and  trench  to  trench;  till  on  July  27th 
came  the  news — "The  whole  of  the  village  of 
Pozieres  is  now  in  our  hands."  And  the  Times 
correspondent  writes  "our  establishment  at 
Pozieres  will  probably  be  regarded  historically 
as  closing  the  second  phase  of  the  battle  of  the 
Somme." 

Since  then   (I  write  on  August  16)  three 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  259 

weeks  have  passed.  The  German  Third  Line 
has  been  entered  at  the  Bois  de  Foureaux,  the 
whole  of  Delville  Wood  has  been  carried ;  and 
in  the  combined  advance  of  July  30th,  the 
French  swept  on  to  Maurepas  on  the  north  of 
the  Somme,  and  are  closely  threatening  both 
Combles  and  Peronne,  while  we  are  attacking 
Thiepval  on  the  left  of  our  line  and  Guille- 
mont  on  the  right,  and  pushing  forward,  north 
of  Pozieres,  toward  Bapaume.  The  whole  of 
the  great  advance  has  been  a  thrust  up-hill 
from  the  valley  floors  of  the  Ancre  and  the 
Somme  toward  a  low  ridge  running  roughly 
east  and  west  and  commanding  an  important 
stretch  of  country  and  vital  communications 
beyond.  "It  has  in  just  four  weeks  of  effort," 
writes  Mr.  Belloc — "accounted  for  some  thirty 
thousand  unwounded  or  slightly  wounded  pris- 
oners; for  much  more  than  100  guns;  for  a 
belt  of  territory  over  five  miles  in  its  extreme 
breadth,  and — what  is  much  more  important 
than  any  of  these  numerical  and  local  calcula- 
tions— it  has  proved  itself  capable  of  continu- 


260  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

ous  effort  against  all  the  concentration  which 
the  enemy  has  been  able  to  bring  against  it.** 

But  it  has  done  yet  more  than  this.  It  has 
welded  the  French  and  English  Alliance — ^the 
wills  and  minds  of  the  two  nations — ^more 
closely  than  ever  before;  and  it  has  tested  the 
British  war-machine — the  new  Armies  and  the 
new  arms — as  they  have  never  yet  been  tested 
in  this  war.  The  result  has  set  the  heart  of 
England  aflame;  even  while  we  ponder  those 
long,  long  casualty  lists  which  represent  the 
bitter  price  that  British  fathers  and  mothers, 
British  wives  and  daughters  have  paid,  and 
must  still  pay,  for  the  only  victory  which  will 
set  up  once  again  the  reign  of  law  and  human- 
ity in  Europe.  What  the  future  has  in  store 
we  cannot  see  yet  in  detail ;  but  the  inevitable 
end  is  clear  at  last.  The  man-power  of  Ger- 
many is  failing,  and  with  it  the  insolent  con- 
fidence of  her  military  caste;  the  man-power 
of  the  Allies,  and  the  gun-power  of  the  Allies, 
are  rising  steadily.    Russia  is  well  launched  on 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  261 

her  return  way  to  Warsaw,  to  Cracow,  to  East 
Prussia.  Italy,  after  the  fall  of  Gorizia,  is  on 
the  march  for  Trieste.  The  Turks  are  fleeing 
across  the  desert  of  Sinai;  and  the  Allies  at 
Salonika  are  taking  the  first  steps  toward 
Sofia. 

But  it  is  in  the  "holy  spirit  of  man"  itself 
that  the  secret  of  the  future  lies.  On  the 
Somme  battle-fields,  thousands  and  thousands 
of  young  lives  have  been  again  laid  down,  that 
England — that  France — may  live.  Here  is  a 
letter,  written  the  day  before  his  death  in 
action,  on  July  1st,  the  opening  day  of  the 
offensive,  by  a  young  English  Officer.*  One 
must  read  it,  if  one  can,  dry-eyed.  Not  tears, 
but  a  steeled  will,  a  purer  heart,  are  what  it 
asks  of  those  for  whom  the  writer  died : — 

"I  am  writing  this  letter  to  you  just  before 
going  into  action  to-morrow  morning  about 
dawn. 

"I  am  about  to  take  part  in  the  biggest 
battle  that  has  yet  been  fought  in  France,  and 

*  Published  in  the  Times. 


262  ENGLAND'S    EFFORT 

one  which  ought  to  help  to  end  the  war  very 
quickly. 

"I  never  felt  more  confident  or  cheerful  in 
my  life  before,  and  would  not  miss  the  attack 
for  anything  on  earth.  The  men  are  in  splen- 
did form,  and  every  officer  and  man  is  more 
happy  and  cheerful  than  I  have  ever  seen  them. 

"I  have  just  been  playing  a  rag  game  of 
football  in  which  the  umpire  had  a  revolver 
and  a  whistle. 

"My  idea  in  writing  this  letter  is  in  case  I 
am  one  of  the  'costs,'  and  get  killed.  I  do  not 
expect  to  be;  but  such  things  have  happened, 
and  are  always  possible. 

"It  is  impossible  to  fear  death  out  here,  when 
one  is  no  longer  an  individual,  but  a  member 
of  a  regiment  and  of  an  army.  To  be  killed 
means  nothing  to  me,  and  it  is  only  you  who 
suffer  for  it ;  you  really  pay  the  cost. 

"I  have  been  looking  at  the  stars,  and  think- 
ing what  an  immense  distance  they  are  away. 
What  an  insignificant  thing  the  loss  of,  say, 
forty  years  of  life  is  compared  with  them !    It 


ENGLAND'S    EFFORT  263 

seems  scarcely  worth  talking  about.  Aj^ell, 
good-bye,  you  darlings.  Try  not  to  worry 
about  it,  and  remember  that  we  shall  meet 
again  really  quite  soon. 

"This  letter  is  going  to  be  posted  if  .  .  ." 
The  letter  was  posted.    But  its  message  of 
Death  is  also  a  message  of  Victory. 

Maey  a.  Wabd. 


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